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0 pointssamarthr11y ago0 comments

I would expect that a more charitable reading of GP would say that people from the lower class have not come in the middle class as much as they had earlier?

At any rate, imo for stability to exist, every generation must _feel_ better off than the previous on average.

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4 comments · 3 top-level

the_real_cher1y ago· 1 in thread

Yeah this is exactly what Im asking to be honest.

Thanks for clarifying this.

How difficult is it to escape the lower class.

SideQuark1y ago

See my post above - they have ample data. The majority of people in the lowest income quintile are not there 10 years later. Also the majority of those in the top quntile do not stay there long either - for both ends there is powerful reversion to the middle.

Here's [1] plenty of data and graphs illustrating mobility over different time frames

[1] https://www.frbsf.org/research-and-insights/publications/eco...

SideQuark1y ago

> that people from the lower class have not come in the middle class as much as they had earlier

When famous economist Chetty et. al. [1] at the Harvard Equal Opportunity project went to prove this, they were surprised to find it's not true. They obtained never before access to lifetime IRS income statements to see how people moved over time, and they found that social mobility has not changed from around 1960 on. (Other studies had already shown this to be true for the first half of the 20th century). Other studies since theirs have obtain similar results. Here's a summary article about their results [2].

[1] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C15&q=che...

[2] https://www.cfr.org/blog/new-harvard-study-us-social-mobilit...

_3u101y ago

The world was stable for a loooong time with no noticeable increase in standard of living.

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