Research Finds Many Blacks Earn Less than Parents Did
A trio of new reports about the economic mobility of Americans is encouraging in some ways but disquieting in others: Two out of three Americans have higher incomes than their parents, and 50 percent of that group is upwardly mobile, meaning that they have moved up at least one rung on the economic ladder from their parents.
But the studies released today as part of the Economic Mobility Project from the Pew Charitable Trust also found that nearly half of the children born to middle-class black families in the late 1960s fell down the ladder. Forty-five percent of black children whose parents were in an income bracket with median earnings of $55,600, adjusted for inflation, in 1968 are now in the lowest fifth of wage earners.
The reports, written by Julia B. Isaacs, a researcher at the Brookings Institution, used data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, which followed 2,367 people from across the country, including 730 African-Americans, since 1968.
A summary of key findings for the three reports states, "In every income group, blacks are less likely than whites to surpass their parents' family income and more likely to fall down the economic ladder."
The reports don't offer any reasons for the disparity (that will be looked at more closely in the project's next series of studies), but Isaacs did offer some theories based on other studies to The Wall Street Journal: Black parents have fewer assets, like houses or stocks, to pass on to their children, and marriage rates are lower for blacks than whites, so black children are more likely to grow up to be single parents. A third possibility is that more black women were working 30 years ago than white women, so whites have benefited more economically from women entering the workforce.
3:20 PM ET | 11-13-2007 | permalink
