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American Dream collapsing for young adults, study says, as odds plunge that children will earn more than their parents

December 8, 2016

Washington Post | Coverage of new study by Raj Chetty, David Grusky, Maximilian Hell, Nathaniel Hendren (Assistant Professor of Economics, Harvard), Robert Manduca (Ph.D. student in Sociology & Social Policy, Harvard), and Jimmy Narang.

"Previously, Chetty's team studied a different measure of mobility: the ability of children to move up or down America's income ladder as they grow up, when compared to other Americans. The new research attempts, for the first time, to quantify so-called "absolute mobility," which people often associate with the American Dream: the odds of a child earning more as an adult than his or her parents earned at the same age.

"The researchers say rising concentration of income among the richest Americans explains 70 percent of what has been a steady decline in absolute mobility from the baby boom generation to millennials, while a slowdown in economic growth explains just 30 percent...

"If you don’t have that kind of widespread economic growth across the income distribution, it’s tough to grow up and earn more than your parents,” Hendren said. “This is a distinct reason to focus on inequality."



American Ghetto

April 24, 2016

The Chronicle Review | By Mario L. Small, Grafstein Family Professor of Sociology. Review of Mitchell Duneier's Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea. "The heart of book," writes Small, "is three detailed studies of black scholars who in the 1940s, ’60s, and ’80s wrote definitive texts on urban conditions among African-Americans," with William Julius Wilson, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor, and The Truly Disadvantaged (1987) the focus of the third.



American Political Science Association issues statement regarding President Trump's executive order 'Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States'

January 30, 2017

American Political Science Association | A statement issued by the American Political Science Association. Harvard's Jennifer Hochschild, past-President of APSA, is a signatory to the letter.



American Sociological Association issues statement concerning Trump administration activities

January 30, 2017

American Sociological Association | A statement by the American Sociological Association in response to the Trump administration's activities, including its Executive Order restricting entry into the United States for people from seven majority-Muslim countries. Harvard's Michèle Lamont currently serves as president of the ASA.



Americans have been lying to themselves about the economy for way too long

January 18, 2017

Washington Post | Talks with Stefanie Stantcheva, Assistant Professor of Economics, about her new study (joint with Alberto Alesina and Edoardo Teso), "Intergenerational Mobility and Support for Redistribution." Stantcheva will be presenting this research in the Harvard Inequality Seminar, Feb 13, 2017.

“We find that this idea of the American Dream, going from rags to riches, is really salient in people’s minds,” Stantcheva said. “In the U.S., people are too optimistic about intergenerational mobility, particularly about the chances of making it from the very bottom to the very top.” Such perceptions — or misperceptions, as the case may be — are important because they may influence how we think about government programs such as the social safety net or public education.

View the research 



Americans just can't leave retirement savings alone

February 13, 2017

Marketplace | “For every dollar people are contributing to the retirement savings system, about 40 cents of that money is coming out before people reach their late 50s,” said Brigitte Madrian, professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. “That’s a quite striking amount of leakage, especially when many people are not saving enough in the first place.”



America’s Dazzling Tech Boom Has a Downside: Not Enough Jobs

October 12, 2016

Wall Street Journal | Cites David Deming (Ph.D. '10), Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, who "estimates that the hollowing out of work spread to programmers, librarians and engineers between 2000 and 2012." The article notes that "for a long time, those with bachelor’s degrees in science seemed to be safe from automation-related layoffs because their cognitive knowledge was tough for computers to duplicate." But Deming's research has shown that the labor market increasingly rewards social skills, with employment and job growth particularly strong for jobs requiring high levels of both cognitive and social skills.
View the research (Aug 2016)



An 'income-achievement' gap within kids' brain structures

May 4, 2015

Boston Globe | Martin R. West, faculty and Ph.D. '06.  The study cited in the article,  “Neuroanatomical Correlates of the Income-Achievement Gap, ” Psychological Science (April 20, 2015), is available here ►



An Atlas of Upward Mobility Shows Paths Out of Poverty

May 4, 2015

New York Times | Discussion of  latest work by professors Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, and Lawrence Katz of the Harvard Economics Department. Raj Chetty first presented these findings in the Malcolm Wiener Seminar.



An FDA Commissioner for the 21st Century

March 29, 2017

New England Journal of Medicine | By Amitabh Chandra and Rachel E. Sachs. Chandra is Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Sachs is Associate Professor at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law.

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