How to Measure Social Mobility

[Valin]

National Review:

We should be concerned with the economic fate of people, not statistical brackets.

Thomas Sowell

5/6/13

 

Most people are not even surprised anymore when they hear about someone who came here from Korea or Vietnam with very little money and very little knowledge of English, but who nevertheless persevered and rose in American society. Nor are we surprised when their children excel in school and go on to professional careers.

 

(Snip)

 

Opportunity is just one factor in economic advancement. How well a given individual or group takes advantage of existing opportunities is another. Only by implicitly (and arbitrarily) assuming that a failure to rise must be due to society’s barriers can we say that American society no longer has opportunity for upward social mobility.

 

(Snip)

 

Most of the media publicize what is happening to the statistical brackets — especially that “top one percent” — rather than what is happening to individual people.

 

We should be concerned with the economic fate of flesh-and-blood human beings, not waxing indignant over the fate of abstract statistical brackets. Unless, of course, we are hustling for an expansion of the welfare state.