US Social Mobility Debate

The cluster centers on debates about social mobility in the US compared to European countries, with commenters citing sources like the Global Social Mobility Index to argue that the US has lower mobility than popularly believed, countering myths of high American opportunity.

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Keywords

washingtonpost.com US IMHO www.oecd harvard.edu goo.gl www.epi en.m www.lisc NYT mobility social mobility social countries upward class myth income wealthy inequality

Sample Comments

vlangber Mar 8, 2020 View on HN

Not according to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index

oblio Jan 14, 2021 View on HN

Most statistics contradict you, despite the popular impression. The US has lower social mobility than most European countries.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index

tweedl Mar 23, 2017 View on HN

Social mobility is lower in US. Sources are easy to find, you can start at https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/america...

ensiferum Feb 5, 2019 View on HN

The US of A actually has the worst social mobility of OECD countries.https://www.epi.org/publication/usa-lags-peer-countries-mobi...

archevel Mar 23, 2017 View on HN

> Several large studies of mobility in developed countries in recent years have found the US among the lowest in mobility. One study (“Do Poor Children Become Poor Adults?") found that of nine developed countries, the United States and United Kingdom had the lowest intergenerational vertical social mobility with about half of the advantages of having a parent with a high income passed on to the next generation.The above quote from wikipedia article on mobility in the US [1] highligts

known Jun 8, 2016 View on HN

Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=433866

jandrewrogers Jan 15, 2025 View on HN

In the US your odds of going from impoverished to wealthy are extraordinarily good. I personally know dozens of examples, even excluding tech entirely. Social mobility is a term of art in economics and only weakly correlated with the ease of becoming wealthy. It doesn’t mean economic mobility.Social mobility is a measure of relative rank change. In countries with compressed wage ranges, such as those you mention, “social mobility” is an artifact of the mathematics, it doesn’t mean you

known Mar 10, 2011 View on HN

Could be due to lack of social mobility http://goo.gl/K8Pg

TheOtherHobbes Oct 23, 2020 View on HN

Perhaps. But the trends are not encouraging.https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/social-mobility-upwar...

s1artibartfast Sep 30, 2021 View on HN

I would look into stats on social mobility by country.Social mobility in the US is still pretty good last time I checked. Most European countries have have lower income income inequality, but less mobility. Eg, the difference between the bottom and top 25‰ is smaller, but your birth class is more predictive of your future income.