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Upward Mobility in America
Each generation seems to rise less than the previous one
I was reading an article by another Medium author that got me thinking. She claimed that in America it’s hard to rise above the socioeconomic group to which you were born. She didn’t offer any links to sources, however… so I looked up the information for myself. The site I found showed that each generation of Americans has been less upwardly mobile than the one before. However, it was limited by only showing data from 1940 to the present.
Of Americans born in 1940, 95% made more than their parents did at the same age. For those born in 1980, it was down to 50% of them making more than their parents did at the same age.
However, this may not be the best way to look at the numbers. Let’s say that Generation One has an average real family income on of $20,000. We would consider that poor for a two-income family, but… remember how people used to live?
Depression era farmers could have a whole family living in what we would consider a shack, with no indoor plumbing or electricity.
As late as the 1960s, there were Americans using outhouses. I had a friend who grew up in a rural community in Indiana who is now in her 70s, so she was born around 1950 — her family didn’t get indoor plumbing until she was a…
