The myth of upward mobility: America's rich believe in meritocracy, but the poor know better.Victoria Griffith looks at the US's rigid class system and how it stifles rags-to-riches rises
By VICTORIA GRIFFITH
For as long as I can remember, I have had a story in my head about a shoe-shine boy who rises from desperate poverty to become head of a large corporate empire. I grew up in the US and have always believed it is faith in this rags-to-riches tale - placed in my brain at such an early age - that makes me truly American.
Yet US society may be far less liquid than it would like to think. Last year's presidential battle was waged between two men - George W. Bush and Al Gore - who attended exclusive private high schools, and, later, Harvard. Bill Gates, widely considered a "self-made man", is also a product of a private high school and Harvard. This pattern speaks more of an entrenched elite than a fluid meritocracy.
The US prides itself on the fluidity of its classes. Bloodlines are important in other parts of the world, but America roots for the fall of the feeble-minded wealthy and the rise of the talented poor.
Every country has its own definition of class, and the US is no exception. Class means more than socio-economic status, yet it is also inextricably tied to household earnings and wealth; it can be dismayingly easy to distinguish affluent from poor Americans simply by their habits. The rich are more likely to go hiking, buy balsamic vinegar and cultivate their own tomatoes; the less rich are more apt to erect chain-link fences, place trampolines in their backyards and eat fast food.
The important thing for Americans is equal opportunity. Despite a long history of racial and ethnic tensions, upward mobility is part of the national image.
Most Americans believe their country gives everyone a chance, and, until the 1990s, research reinforced this notion. Political conservatives (anxious not to spend too much money on social programmes) often cite data that shows Americans flowing freely between socio-economic groups. According to Labour Bureau statistics, in fact, most people in the bottom 10 per cent of household income stay there only a short time.
Over the past decade, however, economists have challenged these notions. In 1992, David Zimmerman, professor of economics at Williams College, broke new ground by studying the long-term impact of parental earnings on their children's income.
"It seemed to me economists were measuring the university student who was poverty-stricken for a few months before landing a job," says Zimmerman. "I decided to measure social mobility over the long run."
Zimmerman found that long-term average income status was mostly determined by parental earnings. Of children born into the bottom quartile, 40 per cent stayed there; 29 per cent moved up just one level. At the top, the picture was similar. Among children born into the highest quartile, 41 per cent remained in that segment; 17 per cent moved down just one level. Because these numbers measured earnings alone, rather than inherited wealth, they probably understate the stability of socio-economic class.
Wealthy Americans may be more surprised than the poor by these numbers. The rich prefer to think of the US as a meritocracy; that helps them feel they deserve their money. The sense that it's easy for the talented to do well makes them optimistic about the future of their own offspring.
A moneyed Bostonian mother told me recently she expected her four-year-old to attend Harvard when she grew up. She does not believe she can purchase her daughter's status; she simply has a blind faith in her child's abilities.
Poor people, on the other hand, are sceptical about their own upward mobility, and that of their children, no matter how bright they are. A black minister from South Bend, Indiana, told me he had taken his young boys to the University of Florida campus on a family trip to that state. "I want them to feel college is a possibility for them," he said.
Such modest ambitions were puzzling. While he had grown up in a poor section of Chicago, the minister had received a master's degree in religion from prestigious Vanderbilt University.
There he had met and married a white woman from a privileged background. His sons regularly achieve top scores in state-wide examinations. It would seem higher education in this family would be taken for granted. The University of Florida, in fact, could be considered a step down.
The minister has a middle-class salary. He is also educated. In the US, that means his children are likely to do well. Yet he keenly felt, after all these years, the precariousness of his leap in status, and the uncertainty of being able to pass his own accomplishments on to his children.
A study by two economics professors at Brigham Young University in Utah three years ago confirmed a strong link between the earnings of fathers and sons, but pinpointed education as a key mechanism of intergenerational status transfer. The number of years a father spends in education, in fact, accounts for up to 50 per cent of the mechanism through which earnings levels are transmitted to a son.
Yet the Brigham Young study is cold comfort to the uneducated poor, who represent most of those at the bottom of the ladder. In the US, university graduates occupy almost all professional jobs, and earnings are closely tied to education. Only 8 per cent of Americans earning less than Dollars 20,000 a year graduated from college, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while of those earning more than Dollars 100,000 a year, 82 per cent have a university degree.
Moreover, monetary rewards associated with higher education have sharpened over the past two decades. Getting a good education is more important than ever to achieving status. Yet becoming educated in the US is not as straightforward as it sounds.
It is not for a lack of effort on the part of the top US schools. A half-century ago, the "old-boy network" set clear socio-economic lines in the US. Most students at Ivy League universities were taken from elite boarding schools, which in turn took students from elite private elementary school.
The old-boy network has been largely scuttled in favour of a more meritocratic admissions policy. After the second world war, US universities became anxious to adopt new, more democratic admissions standards. Universities decided to take students based, in large part, on scores in a new national exam called the SAT (scholastic achievement test). Because the SAT is an aptitude test, measuring general ability in mathematics and English, rather than the mastery of specific academic subjects, it was considered an economically fair vehicle for placement.
The creators of the SATs believed the test would even the playing field for applicants from different socio-economic backgrounds.
In practice, that didn't happen. Teenagers from wealthy backgrounds tended to achieve high scores, while adolescents from poor backgrounds tended to score low. This puts elite schools in the US in an awkward position: to augment their "diversity", they are often forced to accept students with significantly lower test scores.
Even pre-schools are sensitive to the need for diversity. The Beacon Hill Nursery School in Boston allows a small number of underprivileged two- to six-year-olds to forego its Dollars 13,000 annual tuition charge.
The commitment of US schools - particularly top-notch institutions - to breaking down class barriers makes their persistence all the more perplexing. The inability of the poor to perform as well on standardised tests limits their access to a top education later in life, and reinforces class barriers. Something prevents poor children from achieving on the same level as their wealthy counterparts.
Researchers have been searching for this "something" for decades. They reason that whatever it is, it must happen in the home - probably at a very early age. "Middle-class parenting" is viewed as key to future success, although it has never been clear what the term means.
Life in a wealthy household is very different from that in a poor one. Moneyed, better-educated parents use a more sophisticated vocabulary. They are more likely to read to their children, and limit television viewing. Pre-natal care, the amount of violence in a child's neighbourhood, the quality of the schools the child attends - even the number of siblings in a family - may, and probably do, influence academic success. And many of these factors are influenced by socio- economic status.
Yet unravelling the mystery of the precise ways in which wealthy children differ from their poor counterparts has proved elusive. Extremists see Darwinism at work. The most successful people, they reason, got where they are because they are genetically superior.
The problem is that studies on adoption tend to negate this theory. Adopted children brought up in wealthy households tend to do as well, on average, as their natural-born counterparts.
Parenting skills have become an area of increasing focus. In the 1990s, scientists began to push the notion that learning occurs much earlier than previously thought. Expectant mothers rushed out to buy stimulating mobiles and books for their newborns.
Because most of this material was presumably purchased by middle-class and wealthy parents - whose children would statistically tend to do well anyway - we may never know if it makes a difference.
Authors Robert Haveman and Barbara Wolfe tried in their 1994 book Succeeding Generations to amalgamate existing studies on socio-economic status into a big-picture view that sees children as the product of non-financial investments that eventually determine financial success.
The authors' conviction that many variables come into play is persuasive; yet the statistical nature of the book turns this argument into a rather bizarre numbers game. In one table in Succeeding Generations, relevant factors are presented in a point-by-point fashion. Did you move home a lot? Subtract 10 points. Protestant? Add 15.
Two years ago, Judith Harris, a psychologist, argued that home-life made little difference; what counted, she argued in the popular book The Nurture Assumption, was peers. It did not matter how many books you read to your child, Harris argued; the key was how many books their friends read.
The argument is compelling; but since most children live in neighbourhoods and attend schools that reflect their parents' status, it is difficult to remove parents from the equation.
Oh dear. So many studies, and back to where we started: Americans born rich tend to stay rich; those born poor tend to remain poor throughout life.
No one really knows why.
But having witnessed the phenomenon at close range, I am beginning to conclude that it may be the expectation of social immobility that is itself self-perpetuating.
In the autumn, I participated in a programme to attract applications from poor Brazilian immigrant families to attend an elite private elementary school. The school is trying to boost its diversity profile; since my husband is Brazilian and I speak Portuguese, I volunteered to help.
The admissions director, hinting strongly that the children would probably be given full scholarships, gave a presentation about the school at a local Brazilian church.
Only a handful of families came; just three ended up applying. I was puzzled by the comments I heard at a church reception.
Although most of the children attended distressed schools, their parents felt a private education would yield nothing. They were unable to fix their eyes on the prize, I thought at the time, because they did not know what the prize was.
It turned out to be much more complex. At the end of the applications process, all three pairs of parents told me it had been difficult to stay motivated.
Why?
Everyone in their peer group told them they didn't stand a chance of actually being admitted. This was despite the fact that, as part of a diversity outreach programme, they were far more likely to get a place than the many wealthy white families applying to the school. The expectation that their socio-economic status was unchangeable helped maintain the status quo.
What discouraged the Brazilian immigrants and the black minister who took his children to the University of Florida?
Didn't they hear the rags-to-riches tale?
Probably not. Some were born in another country; others were born into families that, through experience, know how difficult it is to move up, even in the meritocracy the US claims to be.
The rich believe in equal opportunity. The poor know better. Rags-to-riches may be a popular American tale, but it is one likely told more frequently to children of the elite than to those of the underprivileged.