Richard V. Reeves: Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That is a Problem, and What to Do About It

Date: 

Monday, November 27, 2017, 12:00pm to 1:45pm

Location: 

Allison Dining Room

Richard V. Reeves, Senior Fellow in Economic Studies and Co-Director of the Center on Children and Families, Brookings Institution.

In conversation with David T. Ellwood, Director of the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy and Isabelle and Scott Black Professor of Political Economy, Harvard Kennedy School.


Dream HoardersAmerica is becoming a class-based society

It’s now conventional wisdom to focus on the excesses of the top 1% — especially the top 0.01% — and how the ultra-rich are hoarding income and wealth while incomes for most other Americans are stagnant. But the more important, and widening, gap in American society is between the upper middle class and everyone else.

Reeves defines the upper middle class as those whose incomes are in the top 20 percent of American society. As Reeves shows, the growing separation between the upper middle class and everyone else can be seen in family structure, neighborhoods, attitudes, and lifestyle. Those at the top of the income ladder are becoming more effective at passing on their status to their children, reducing overall social mobility. The result is a fracturing of American society along class lines, not just an economic divide. Upper-middle-class children become upper-middle-class adults.

These trends matter because the separation and perpetuation of the upper middle class corrode prospects for more progressive approaches to policy. Various forms of “opportunity hoarding” among the upper middle class make it harder for others to rise up to the top rung. Examples include zoning laws and schooling, occupational licensing, college application procedures, and the allocation of internships. Upper middle class opportunity hoarding, Reeves argues, results in a less competitive economy as well as a less open society.

 Reeves argues that society can take effective action to reduce opportunity hoarding and thus promote broader opportunity. Dream Hoarders shows how American society has become the very class-defined society that earlier Americans rebelled against — and what can be done to restore a more equitable society.

View contents and read chapter 1
Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It, by Richard V. Reeves. Brookings Institution Press, 2017.
 

About the speaker

Richard V. Reeves is a senior fellow in Economic Studies and co-director of the Center on Children and Families. His research focuses on social mobility, inequality, and family change. Prior to joining Brookings in 2013, he was director of strategy to the UK’s Deputy Prime Minister.

Richard’s publications for Brookings include his latest book Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do about It (2017), Time for justice: Tackling race inequalities in health and housing (2017), Ulysses goes to Washington: Political myopia and policy commitment devices (2015), Saving Horatio Alger: Equality, Opportunity, and the American Dream (2014), Character and Opportunity (2014), and The Parenting Gap (2014). He is also a contributor to The Atlantic, National Affairs, Democracy Journal, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Richard is also the author of John Stuart Mill – Victorian Firebrand, an intellectual biography of the British liberal philosopher and politician.

In September 2017, Politico magazine named Richard one of the top 50 thinkers in the U.S. for his work on class and inequality. He is a member of the Government of Canada's Ministerial Advisory Committee on Poverty, and also teaches at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. 

Richard’s previous roles include: director of Demos, the London-based political think-tank; director of futures at the Work Foundation; principal policy advisor to the Minister for Welfare Reform; social affairs editor of the The Observer; research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research; economics correspondent for The Guardian; and a researcher at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London. He is also a former European Business Speaker of the Year.

Richard has a BA from Oxford University and a PhD from Warwick University. 

Read more of Richard V. Reeves's work
www.brookings.edu/experts/richard-v-reeves

 

See also: Fall 2017