A 30 year study found that it is hard for poor kids to move up the economic ladder:
They found that a child’s fate is in many ways fixed at birth — determined by family strength and the parents’ financial status.
The kids who got a better start — because their parents were married and working — ended up better off. Most of the poor kids from single-parent families stayed poor.
Just 33 children — out of nearly 800 — moved from the low-income to high-income bracket. And a similarly small number born into low-income families had college degrees by the time they turned 28.
That 33 out of 800 is just 4.1%. When we describe America as the land of opportunity I think most of us would like to picture something higher than 33 out of 800.
The good news is that the long term generational impact could be much larger. If those 33 go on to have families with kids that have that “better start”, then their future generations will be more likely to be economically successful.