As the economist Raj Chetty and his team have covered in several papers, upward mobility is in structural decline in the US. In 1940, a child born into an American household had a 92 percent chance of making more money than her parents. But a child born in the 1980s has just a 50 percent chance of surpassing their parents’ income.23 In forty years, the American dream went from being a widespread reality to a coin toss.24 Mobility, Chetty found, is a product of place.
