Socioeconomic mobility in the United States

Socioeconomic mobility in the United States refers to the upward or downward movement of Americans from one social class or economic level to another, through job changes, inheritance, marriage, connections, tax changes, innovation, illegal activities, hard work, lobbying, luck, health changes or other factors.

This vertical mobility can be the change in socioeconomic status between parents and children ("inter-generational"); or over the course of a lifetime ("intra-generational").

Socioeconomic mobility typically refers to "relative mobility", the chance that an individual American's income or social status will rise or fall in comparison to other Americans, but can also refer to "absolute" mobility, based on changes in living standards in America.

In recent years, several studies have found that vertical intergenerational mobility is lower in the US than in some European countries. US social mobility has either remained unchanged or decreased since the 1970s. A study conducted by the Pew Charitable Trusts found that the bottom quintile is 57% likely to experience upward mobility and only 7% to experience downward mobility.

A study published in 2008 showed that economic mobility in the U.S. increased from 1950 to 1980, but has declined sharply since 1980.

A 2013 Brookings Institution study found income inequality was increasing and becoming more permanent, sharply reducing social mobility.

A large academic study released in 2014 found US mobility overall has not changed appreciably in the last 25 years (for children born between 1971 and 1996), but a variety of up and down mobility changes were found in several different parts of the country. On average, American children entering the labor market today have the same chances of moving up in the income distribution (relative to their parents) as children born in the 1970s.

However, because US income inequalities have increased substantially, the consequences of the "birth lottery" - the parents to whom a child is born - are larger today than in the past. US wealth is increasingly concentrated in the top 10% of American families, so children of the remaining 80% are more likely to be born at lower starting incomes. Even if they are equally mobile and climb the same distance up the US socioeconomic ladder as children born 25 years earlier, the bottom 90% of the ladder is worth less now, so they gain less income value from their climb ... especially when compared to the top 10%.

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