It seems that whenever the federal government releases a new statistical report providing insight into the state of our country, the numbers feel negative. Some indicate the number of people living in poverty while others detail the federal deficit.
However, one man is looking to change this, or at least supplement it, with the addition of so-called “social mobility” statistics. With this measure, the U.S. would be able to quantify something it has always claimed to be the land of: opportunity.
And that’s exactly what Richard Reeves want to call this government department: the Office of Opportunity. Reeves is a fellow in economic studies and the policy director for the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution.
How would social mobility be measured? Well, the government has a few options available. One idea is to analyze the proportion of children born in lower quintiles of the income ladder who move to the top two. Another option is to look at high school graduation rates of students with a GPA of 2.5 and higher. Or the government could use the number of four-year olds in preschool, the number of 25- to 49-year olds who work or the number of births within marriages.
All of these numbers would provide insight into the social mobility stats of the country. The government could also look to the U.K. and New Zealand for help in crafting it. These two countries already have similar programs established, such as the U.K., which uses 17 indicators to track long-term mobility.
Ultimately, Reeves hopes to create a dashboard of indicators that can be analyzed yearly in an annual report. This data, in turn, would help the government create informed polices.
The Office of Opportunity would function similarly to the Congressional Budget Office. It would be small and independent, making it a reliable and viable office that both Republicans and Democrats can trust. Reeves estimates that it would cost about $10 million a year to operate.
While, the federal government has yet to display serious interest in its creation, some cities and states, like Colorado, are considering the idea. And that may be the best thing — start local and build up.
According to Reeves, all that is left is for the government to decide if it is worth it.
“Adopting an official mobility measure is unlikely to require vast new data collection — though some investments would need to be made,” he writes in his Brookings proposal. “It’s more of a question of deciding mobility is worth measuring and promoting.”
So, what do you think – is it?
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Tag: social mobility
More Diversity Doesn’t Have to Mean Decreased Social Mobility
Not only can Salt Lake City boast of its beautiful scenery, but it can also tout that it’s one of the best places in America for a low-income child to have a chance at becoming an economically-secure adult.
The Utah city (along with San Jose, California) has a social mobility rate comparable to Denmark, a country with one of the highest rates of relative mobility in the world. Poor kids in Salt Lake City have a 10.8 percent chance of zooming from the bottom fifth in income to the top fifth. (In contrast, Atlanta and Milwaukee have lower social mobility rates than “any developed country for which data are currently available,” according to the 2013 study by economists at Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley.)
Salt Lake City’s secret, writes Nancy Cook for the National Journal, was “less economic segregation, a good public school system, strong family stability, a reliable social safety net, and less income inequality. Areas with less urban sprawl and less racial segregation also performed better in the rankings.”
But Salt Lake City has become a different place than the one captured in the aforementioned study, Cook notes. The majority of people in Utah’s capital city used to be Mormon, but according to the Salt Lake City Tribune, the religious group is no longer the majority. This matters because the Church of Latter-day Saints makes a point of providing a wealth of services for its members and encourages families to stay together.
City officials are working to maintain their social mobility rate even as the population becomes more diverse and income inequality rises. Rosemarie Hunter, the director of The University of Utah’s University Neighborhood Partners, says, “Thirteen years ago, the university looked at its data and realized that two ZIP codes in the city had virtually no students coming to the university. That was a huge red flag.” So Neighborhood Partners began to visit the west-side neighborhoods that weren’t sending kids to college, forging partnerships with businesses and community leaders to help get these kids on the right track toward higher education.
Additionally, the Salt Lake City School District has opened community centers serving the poor and offering dental services, medical care, and education.
Natalie Gouchnour of the University of Utah told Cook, “This state has a good network of taking care of people in need. Part of that comes from the Mormon culture, but part of it is just the ethos of the state.” Pamela Perlich of the Salt Lake Bureau of Economic and Business Research agreed with her, saying that her city has “the tradition and wherewithal to do something” to stop social mobility from decreasing.
With Utah setting an example with its housing-first program to end homelessness and its progressive attitude about immigration reform, it has a good chance of maintaining its status as a great place for people of all income levels to live.
MORE: Utah is On Track to End Homelessness by 2015 With This One Simple Idea
Can Living in a City Give You a Leg Up in Life?
We’ve been hearing for years that people who live in cities tend to be thinner and more active than those who live in suburbs—all that walking and climbing stairs seems to contribute—but a new study finds that people who live in densely-packed cities also are more likely to be agile in a different way: climbing the economic and social ladder.
The study by Smart Growth America and the University of Utah’s Metropolitan Urban Center is significant because it quantifies urban sprawl. Sprawl is not just about how much land is occupied by a city. As the authors write, “sprawl is not just growth, but is a specific, and dysfunctional, style of growth.” The study shows that the health benefits that correlate with city living are specific to dense cities, where residents have lower rates of obesity and diabetes. Residents of sprawled-out cities such as Atlanta do not show the same benefits as do those living in packed-in places such as New York.
Reid Ewing of the University of Utah, lead researcher on the study, told Lane Anderson of Deseret News, “Urban places provide higher likelihood of moving up the social ladder. Compact places provide better access to jobs, better transit and more integration.” The study judged Los Angeles to be relatively dense compared to Atlanta and other sprawling places, and found that a child in L.A. has a 10 percent chance of moving from the bottom of the income scale to the top, while an Atlanta-based low-income child has only a 4 percent of chance of such a rise.
Ewing said that one factor in this difference might be transportation—denser cities tend to have better public transportation, which gives citizens of all income levels more access to better jobs and schools, but is especially important for low-income people who may not have a car. Better mixing between people of different ethnicities and economic levels might contribute to the social mobility, too. “In dense areas, there are more chances for networking, for meeting people, more chances of getting better salaries and jobs,” he said. And riding the train also seems to keep people thinner—train riders are 6.5 pounds lighter than car drivers, according to The American Journal of Preventive Medicine, and they’re 81 percent less likely to ever become obese. One twist: the study found that kids get more exercise in the suburbs where they can run around in backyards and playgrounds, and adults get more exercise in cities, where they are forced to hoof it.
The authors of the study hope their findings will encourage more cities to implement healthy changes, such as bike-share programs, more mixed-use developments, and improved transportation. Or, as Ewing asks, “It’s time to ask the question again, how can we make cities better?”
MORE: More College Graduates Moving Into Cities
They Helped Him Enjoy Christmas When He Was Poor. Now He’s Helping Them.
Money was tight when John Romero was growing up in north Denver. His mother would walk with him and his three siblings to the Denver Santa Claus Shop, where low-income families have been receiving holiday gifts since 1931. Romero never forgot the joy of playing with an electric train set he pulled home in a red wagon when he was seven. Now he’s a senior property manager for Regency Centers, a real estate company, and when he learned the Denver Santa Claus Shop needed a new place to host its annual gift shop, he offered the use of a vacant retail space he manages. Hundreds of volunteers will distribute toys to needy children there this week, and some of the kids just might grow up to return the favor.