Most Americans believe that with due sacrifice of time and effort anyone will be able to prosper and provide their children with a better life.
But the reality is that children born into poor families in the United States tend to stay poor and children born into wealthy families generally stay rich.
Why is this so?
A new book explores this question by making comparisons within and across ten nations. Persistence, Privilege, and Parenting: The Comparative Study of Intergenerational Mobility examines why advantage and disadvantage persist across generations, and to explore policy responses that might boost economic mobility in an era of rising inequality.
The book is based on presentations made at a conference hosted by the Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Volume editors Timothy Smeeding (IRP Director and Distinguished Professor, La Follette School of Public Affairs), Robert Erikson (Stockholm University), and Markus Jäntti (Stockholm University)—who are widely recognized as pioneering forces in the study of intergenerational mobility—convened the conference to compare how mobility of children differs between countries, and how those differences relate to public sector policies and private family life.