Few scholars make as big an impact on their field as Professor Raj Chetty. As leader of the Equality of Opportunity Project, and with access to (anonymised) tax records, Chetty and his co-authors have transformed our understanding of social mobility in the U.S.

Prof. Chetty has produced work deepening our understanding of relative intergenerational mobility, the role of place, gender gaps in opportunity and life expectancy, how colleges act to both disrupt and reinforce inequality, and the importance of good teachers in our schools and kindergarten classrooms.

A few of the many findings is Chetty's report about social mobilization in America:

  • The chances of making it from a childhood in poverty to an adulthood in affluence (i.e. moving from bottom to top income quintile) are lower in the U.S. than in other nations.
  • There is a very strong relationship between the incomes of parents and the incomes their children will have as adults. Inequality, in other words, is strongly inherited.
  • Rates of relative intergenerational mobility in the U.S. appear to have been flat for decades.
  • It is a different story, however, for absolute mobility – which indicates how well a person does compared to their parents in absolute terms, rather than relative ones. On this measure of mobility, the last few decades have seen a sharp decline. Most Americans born in 1940 ended up better off, in real terms than their parents at the same age. Only half of those of those born in 1980 have surpassed their parent’s family income.
  • Place matters for mobility. There are significant differences in upward mobility rates across different places too, right down to the county and city level.

As this brief tour suggests, the range and impact of Chetty’s work are already very substantial. But as he and his team at the Equality of Opportunity Project continue to collect, connect, and analyze administrative data, we can be sure that what we have seen so far is just the beginning.

Read the article about social mobility by Richard V. Reeves and Eleanor Krause at Brookings.