Changing Opportunity: Sociological Mechanisms Underlying Growing Class Gaps and Shrinking Race Gaps in Economic Mobility
研究发现美国近几十年代际流动性按种族和阶级快速变化：高收入白人家庭子女收入优势扩大30%，而低收入黑人家庭子女收入追赶白人缩小差距30%，这些变化由社区内父母就业率差异驱动。
Abstract We show that intergenerational mobility changed rapidly by race and class in recent decades in the U.S. and study the causal mechanisms underlying those changes. Between the 1978 and 1992 birth cohorts, earnings increased for white children from high-income families relative to white children from low-income families, increasing earnings gaps by parental income (“class”) by 30%. Earnings increased for Black children at all parental income levels, reducing white-Black earnings gaps for children from low-income families by 30%. Class gaps grew and race gaps shrank similarly for non-monetary outcomes such as educational attainment, standardized test scores, and mortality rates. Using a quasi-experimental design, we show that the divergent trends in economic mobility were caused by differential changes in childhood environments, as proxied by parental employment rates, within local communities defined by race, class, and childhood county. Outcomes improve across birth cohorts for children who grow up in communities with increasing parental employment rates, with larger effects for children who move to such communities at younger ages. Children’s outcomes are most strongly related to the parental employment rates of peers they are more likely to interact with, such as those in their own birth cohort, suggesting that the relationship between children’s outcomes and parental employment rates is mediated by social interaction.