As Americans we like to think we with live in the land of opportunity where hard work and diligence pay off with a rise up the social and economic ladder to a standard of living that's the envy of the world. It's a myth.
It's not that we don't want that, but the reality is that upward mobility has been on the wane in the U.S. for decades compared to other places in the world.
After World War II and with the GI bill, many Americans moved up as they received college degrees and quickly outstripped their parents in earnings and quality of life. Given the times, their children also went off to college and started up the ladder.
It was also a period when a high school degree could net you a good job and hard work could pay off with a rise up the ladder.
We don't live in that place anymore.
Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, a professor at Columbia and a former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and chief economist for the World Bank, wrote in The New York Times a couple Sundays ago that "The gap between aspiration and reality could hardly be wider. Today, the United States has less equality of opportunity than almost any other advanced industrial country. Study after study has exposed the myth that America is a land of opportunity. This is especially tragic: While Americans may differ on the desirability of equality of outcomes, there is near-universal consensus that inequality of opportunity is indefensible. The Pew Research Center has found that some 90 percent of Americans believe that the government should do everything it can to ensure equality of opportunity."
Stiglitz suggests the problem of dwindling mobility is multifold: The poor are getting poorer, the middle class has stagnated and those at the top are in an entirely different class altogether.
The wealthy, for example, can provide better health and nutrition, enrichment classes and activities and the financial wherewithal to send their children to the highest institutions of learning in the country.
The rest of us, not so much.
While we have free and universal public education (although not necessarily preschool where education is vital), that ends at the 12th grade. A 12th-grade education may have worked when I graduated in '66 but it doesn't cut it now.
Students now at graduation face the daunting task of undertaking college at a time when college costs are rising and student loans are ubiquitous.
Forget about working enough in the summer and during the school year to cover college tuition, books and housing. Doesn't happen, especially since the closer you get to graduation the more emphasis there is on having internships -- many unpaid -- that you have to seek if you want a shot at getting a job after college. Remember the wealthy kids? Their parents make sure their life goes on education-wise even if the internship is unpaid -- and with mom and dad's connections they are better positioned to get the internship
in the first place.
And if the typical middle
class or poor students makes it through college they then face a pile of student loan debt -- believe it or not, nationally it's more than $1 trillion and larger than car or credit card debt.
The average student loan debt is now more than $27,000. About 64 percent of white students have debts by the time they graduate and it's a considerably higher rate among African-American and Latino students.
And when those students graduate, if they are lucky, they will find a job -- but typically at a pay scale that won't pay off that loan any time soon.
While these students are doing everything right as we've known it to move onward and upward, their mobility is hampered by the realities on the ground.
Stiglitz's prescription for turning that around?
"Policies that promote equality of opportunity must target the youngest Americans.
First, we have to make sure that mothers are not exposed to environmental hazards and get adequate prenatal health care. Then, we have to reverse the damaging cutbacks to preschool education, a theme Mr. Obama emphasized on Tuesday. We have to make sure that all children have adequate nutrition and health care -- not only do we have to provide the resources, but if necessary, we have to incentivize parents, by coaching or training them or even rewarding them for being good caregivers. The right says that money isn't the solution. They've chased reforms like charter schools and private-school vouchers, but most of these efforts have shown ambiguous results at best. Giving more money to poor schools would help. So would summer and extracurricular programs that enrich low-income students' skills.
"Finally, it is unconscionable that a rich country like the United States has made access to higher education so difficult for those at the bottom and middle. There are many alternative ways of providing universal access to higher education, from Australia's income-contingent loan program to the near-free system of universities in Europe. A more educated population yields greater innovation, a robust economy and higher incomes -- which mean a higher tax base. Those benefits are, of course, why we've long been committed to free public education through 12th grade. But while a 12th-grade education might have sufficed a century ago, it doesn't today. Yet we haven't adjusted our system to contemporary realities."
Many of us were blessed to grow up when we did with a number of possibilities before us. Now the "ladder of opportunity" appears to be a Sisyphean task that few will master.
Kendall P. Stanley is retired editor of the Petoskey News-Review. He can be contacted at kendallstanley@charter.net.
The end of upward mobility
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