The Surprising Basics of Economic Mobility

While blacks lag behind, overall social mobility in the U.S. is better than the conventional wisdom would suggest.

I’ve gone dark a bit this fall, as I am desperately trying to finish a long paper on the decline in male labor force participation and the first of what will be three long papers comprising a state-of-the-art review of what we know about economic mobility. As a teaser for the latter, I thought I’d post a couple of related bits of “content,” as the kids say.

The presentations below lay out some of my contrarian takes on the evidence around economic mobility in the U.S. (which, I think, have the virtue of being consistent with the latest and best research). The takeaway from both talks was that our mobility problems are less severe than the conventional wisdom would suggest — except that the nation should be ashamed of the black-white mobility gaps that continue to exist as yawning divides fifty years after the historic gains of the Civil Rights Movement.

First, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System has just released Economic Mobility: Research & Ideas on Strengthening Families, Communities & the Economy. This is a conference volume that came out of an April 2015 event on mobility. I was on the opening panel, with Stanford’s Raj Chetty and UMass Amherst’s provost, Katherine Newman.

Video below — watch me kill in my opening joke and then make things awkward with Fed Chair Yellen, who was sitting directly in front of me.

Other videos from the conference are here. My PowerPoint. And, finally, my chapter in the conference volume.

Relatedly, back in October, I participated in Hillsdale College’s Free Market Forum in Atlanta. My panel was on income inequality, but I was asked to speak about economic mobility specifically. The panel was moderated by Hillsdale’s Gary Wolfram and also included William Watson of McGill University and Sally Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute. Video below. My remarks run from the 4:00 minute mark to the 27:00 minute mark, but the whole panel is worth watching. Watson’s is an entertaining discussion of when we ought to care about income inequality, and Pipes gave the best overview of the gender wage gap I’ve ever heard.

My PowerPoint is also available, and you can also watch the Forum’s other panels on a range of economic topics. I recommend the Mercatus Center’s Don Boudreaux’s talk on free trade especially (pdf, but do watch the panel).

Can you tell I lost weight between these talks?

Hope you enjoy the presentations.