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Race, Place of Birth Are Key Factors in Americans’ Upward Mobility Children are less likely to earn more than their parents as adults if they are Black or grow up in the South, according to a new study
By Les Dunseith
A new longitudinal study of the geography of upward mobility in the United States shows that regions with high levels of income inequality have suffered from consistently low levels of intergenerational mobility over the last century.
In an article published today by the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, co-authors Dylan Connor of Arizona State University and Michael Storper of UCLA Luskin discuss findings that include:
- Individuals growing up in urbanized and industrialized regions — such as in the Northeast, Midwest and West — experienced higher levels of intergenerational social mobility in the early 20th century, although this advantage declined over time.
- People born in the South experienced consistently lower levels of social mobility throughout the 20th century.
- Regions with large Black populations that face income inequality have suffered from consistently lower levels of social mobility.
- An individual’s early childhood environment has gained increasing importance over time as a predictor of economic upward mobility in the country. In the early 20th century, for example, proximity to a city with employment opportunities in manufacturing was of greater importance than in today’s economy. Contemporary upward mobility is more likely to depend on educational success.
The authors analyzed location and income data from the U.S. Census for more than 1 million U.S.-born fathers and sons in 1920 and 1940, respectively, to measure regional social mobility in the early 20th century. They compared those findings with contemporary social mobility patterns derived from Internal Revenue Service data for 10 million children from the 1980–1982 birth cohorts and later observed from 2011–2012. Although the newer data capture the experiences of both males and females, the historical data only apply to males.
Why did the authors need to look back 100 years?
“The article’s central concern is intergenerational social mobility — meaning the probability that the children of one generation will or will not achieve a higher socioeconomic status than their parents,” said Storper, a professor of urban planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. Although adult life may take place in a region different from one’s childhood, the region where a person starts life influences factors such as quality of schooling, social support structures and parental income.
“We have to know how the conditions of their childhood might have helped them be both geographically and socially mobile,” he said, “and whether geographical migrants are more socially mobile than stay-at-homes.”
Connor pointed out that understanding changes over time in intergenerational social mobility can provide a sense of how and where society needs to make improvements. Intergenerational change is a slow process, however, and the study needed to compare multiple waves of parents to their adult children at intervals that were 25 years apart.
“To get a sense of how things are changing across generations, we must take a long-term perspective,” said Connor, an assistant professor in Arizona State’s School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning.
In recent decades, the Northern Plains went from having one of the lowest rates to among the highest for intergenerational social mobility. One factor was a propensity for people born there to relocate as adults to other parts of the country for better work opportunities, often in sunnier locales such as California and other Western states.
But children born in the South had persistently lower levels of intergenerational social mobility, the study found. Among the factors is “the persistent way that race influences early childhood opportunities, probably by discouraging social consensus around investing in such things as schooling for all, and the way discrimination affects childhood and adult performance,” Storper said.
“This is what we call ‘deep roots’ — or persistent long-term structures impacting social mobility.”
Although many of the leading economic regions of the early 20th century weakened over time as springboards for intergenerational advancement, historical economic inequality within the regions with those deep roots, in contrast, exhibited a more consistent negative association. Correlating factors included high school dropout rates and income inequality.
The Black population share also showed statistical correlation, which the authors say shows the persistent impact of racial subordination, inequality and inadequate schooling on the U.S. landscape of opportunity.
“By social mobility, we are thinking about the degree of upward mobility within the American income/class structure for children who were born into poverty,” said Connor, who noted how the study relates directly to recent momentum around racial inequity and the Black Lives Matter movement. “One of the main concerns is that African American children are both more likely to be born into poverty and also face particularly high barriers to escaping poverty as adults — a point that is very strongly supported by our findings.”
A robust local labor market and access to quality schooling in early life were consistent factors in social mobility across generations and over time, according to the study. Because much of the South continues to lag other regions in terms of schooling and other social influences, major improvements in upward mobility have been slow to develop despite considerable growth in employment and economic output.
The authors also sought to identify and understand other long-term patterns across geographical regions.
“Some areas of the United States have witnessed significant declines in social mobility, while others have had persistently low levels all along. Thus, the contemporary national picture is shaped by both powerful forces of change that reduce intergenerational mobility in some regions and deeply entrenched long-term forces generating persistence in others,” they write in the journal.
Two specific cases stood out to the researchers when they compared data over time.
First, urban areas of the Midwest were comparable to the persistently high-income Northeast and West regions in the early 20th century, but intergenerational social mobility in the region was the third-lowest by century’s end, only slightly above the less urban areas of the South.
Second, the benefits of migration were higher for people leaving the Plains and Mountain regions, and the South to a lesser extent, than for their counterparts who left higher-income regions elsewhere.
“This intuitive pattern is consistent across the century and confirms the role of outmigration in providing a path to upward mobility for people growing up in lower-income places,” the authors wrote.
Risk of Undercounting Native Tribal Populations, Akee Says
Associate Professor of Public Policy Randall Akee was featured in a Spokesman-Review article discussing the risks of undercounting Northwest tribal community populations. The Census Bureau announced that it will cut door-to-door counting short by a month, leaving census workers scrambling to meet the new deadline of Sept. 30. Indigenous people living on reservations were undercounted more than any other group in the 2010 census, the article noted. Tribal leaders fear that the shortened timeline could lead to an even more drastic undercount this year, resulting in less federal funding and other resources for tribes. Akee explained that the COVID-19 pandemic has stalled self-response rates. “There are so many competing messages about other things, and it’s hard for this to take hold in communities where people are worried about their economic stability and their actual health,” he said. “Filling out a census form is further down in people’s priorities.”
The Data Behind a Worsening Black Housing Crisis
A study by UCLA Luskin’s Center for Neighborhood Knowledge was featured in a Los Angeles Times article about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Black housing crisis. Before the pandemic, Black people faced the greatest housing insecurity across the United States, with the highest unemployment rate and lowest income of any racial group. COVID-19 has exacerbated the crisis, with Black and Latino workers facing the greatest job losses. Experts explain that systemic racism has hindered Black households from accessing higher-paying jobs and building wealth through homeownership. The article discussed the displacement of longtime Black communities in South Los Angeles and cited a study by the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, directed by research professor Paul Ong. The study showed declining Black population percentages in Leimert Park, Jefferson Park and West Adams compared to a growing white population, and also found that median income growth in those communities outpaced that of the county.
Akee Alarmed by Undercounting of Navajo Population
Associate Professor of Public Policy Randall Akee spoke with KJZZ News about the danger of undercounting the Navajo Nation population in the 2020 census. The coronavirus pandemic has hindered the self-reporting phase of the census; in April, fewer than 1% of Navajo had reported to the U.S. Census Bureau. Now, that number has risen to about 6.5% — still a fraction of the number that responded last time. Akee explained that it’s important for the census to get the numbers right. “Undercounting is horrible. It’s problematic because it affects everything from allocations of funding to congressional representation,” he said. Akee noted that funding for the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act was also based on population size. Undercounting of minority populations can drastically affect the allocation of federal aid and resources. Census workers are responsible for filling in missing data in order to account for lack of self-reporting.
Akee on Underrepresentation of Ethnic Minorities
Associate Professor of Public Policy Randall Akee spoke to ABC News about the risk of underrepresentation of Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders in the 2020 census. Government attempts to count smaller populations of ethnic minorities, including Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, in the United States have historically been inaccurate because of unwillingness or inability to participate in the census. Profound distrust of the government and language barriers have also contributed to inaccurate census results. Experts worry that the added challenges presented by the coronavirus pandemic may exacerbate inaccuracies in the 2020 census, which could result in small ethnic minorities being denied public funds and resources. “I’ve seen most clearly in the last two to three months the vital importance of as accurate as possible population counts, especially for small populations like NHPI,” Akee said. “Because without that, it may potentially throw off our public health figures.”
LPPI Study on Coronavirus Impact on Minorities Is Distributed to Associated Press Outlets
A recently published study by the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative (LPPI) based at UCLA Luskin received media coverage by the Associated Press. The study found that 40% of black people and Latinos reside in neighborhoods where those living conditions make them more susceptible to getting infected or transmitting the coronavirus. “It just builds on the vulnerability of these residents and of these ethnic enclaves,” co-author Sonja Diaz says in the AP story, which was picked up by the websites of news outlets such as KTLA5 television in Los Angeles and the New York Times. The LPPI director goes on to say, “They’re least equipped to deal with this virus because now they live in neighborhoods where they can’t stay at home and practice physical distancing, they’re hardest hit economically and then they’re not getting relief and recovery benefits.”
Ong Comments on Slowing Population Growth in California
Paul Ong, research professor and director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, was featured in a CalMatters article discussing California’s population growth as it slows to near-zero. After 170 years of steady growth, birth rates have started to decline and death rates are increasing. Additionally, foreign immigration is waning and more people are leaving California for other states. As the federal government conducts the decennial census, some experts worry that the poor, the nonwhite and the undocumented will be undercounted. A new UCLA study led by Ong found that the poorest neighborhoods in Los Angeles County also tend to have the lowest census response rates and the highest rates of COVID-19 infection. “The only way to prevent an extreme undercount in some areas of the county would be for a horde of in-person census takers to descend on parts of the city with the greatest chance of coronavirus transmission,” Ong said in the study.
Akee on Potential for Privacy Loss Among Native Populations
Associate Professor of Public Policy Randall Akee spoke to Digital Trends about the impact that “differential privacy” protections used by the U.S. Census Bureau could have on small Native populations. Increased concerns about compromising anonymity in its datasets have prompted the bureau to implement greater privacy measures. These include differential privacy, a data science method that involves introducing error, or “noise,” to protect individual records. The bureau hopes that its commitment to increased security will make people more willing to participate in the 2020 Census. However, some researchers worry that it is putting a higher value on privacy than access to reliable data. Akee spoke about the impact of privacy loss for smaller populations, like Alaska Natives. Tribal governments will have to decide their own level of comfort with potential release of information about their populations, he said.
Expert on Africa Presents Senior Fellows Talk
The big story of the 21st century will be Africa, according to international policy expert Kate Almquist Knopf, who spoke Feb. 6 as part of the Senior Fellows Speaker Series at UCLA Luskin. “If we look at demographic growth rates, Africa’s population is projected to more than double between now and 2050, when 25 percent — a quarter of the world’s population — will be African,” she said. Knopf works for the U.S. Department of Defense as the director of the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, which aims to be an objective source of strategic analysis on issues in Africa. The audience for her presentation, which was co-hosted by Global Public Affairs, included local civic and business professionals who serve as mentors for UCLA Luskin students as part of the Senior Fellows Leadership program. The talk focused not only on demography but also on issues related to climate, economics, governance and security. Knopf cited statistics that show how issues such as poverty and authoritarianism contribute to violence and humanitarian crises in African countries such as South Sudan. “The violent conflict that we are seeing — and the violent extremism — I think portends the possibility of quite significant state collapse on the continent,” Knopf said. Some encouraging signs are evident, however. Because the youth of the continent are increasingly making their voices heard, “all is not lost,” she said. “It’s really fragile change at this point … but the great hope is that the youth across the continent want governments that work … and they are out there fighting for it — nonviolently, peacefully — and making a difference in big, profound ways.”
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