[ExI] Protected Elites

[Damien Broderick]

At 05:24 PM 5/15/2009 -0700, Damien Sullivan url'd:

>http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/04/Hertz_MobilityAnalysis.pdf

This is a fabulously interesting and informative report!

"While few would deny that it is *possible* to start poor and end 
rich, the evidence suggests that this feat is more difficult to 
accomplish in the United States than in other high-income nations."

"Children from low-income families have only a 1 percent chance of 
reaching the top
5 percent of the income distribution, versus children of the rich who 
have about a 22
percent chance.
  Children born to the middle quintile of parental family income 
($42,000 to $54,300)
had about the same chance of ending up in a lower quintile than their 
parents (39.5
percent) as they did of moving to a higher quintile (36.5 percent). 
Their chances of
attaining the top five percentiles of the income distribution were 
just 1.8 percent....
  African American children who are born in the bottom quartile are 
nearly twice as
likely to remain there as adults than are white children whose 
parents had identical
incomes, and are four times less likely to attain the top quartile."

etc etc

Damien Broderick