Have you ever read a book?
One that requires thought?
1. Define poor? No home, no heat, no food. It is important to remember that this is not an enduring class of people: it is a definition that applies for this moment. The same is true for those in the top 10 or 20 percent: a snapshot. This is a nation of opportunity, and economic mobility.
a. Of individuals who were in the lowest income quintile in 1975, 5.1 percent were still there in 1991, 14.6 percent had moved up to the second quintile, 21 percent to the middle quintile, 30.3 percent to the fourth quintile and 29 percent to the highest quintile. Of those in the highest quintile in 1975, 62.5 percent were still there in 1991, while 0.9 percent had fallen all the way to the bottom fifth. HTTP Error 404 - File or Directory Not Found - Dallas Fed
b. The transience of individuals in low income brackets, it becomes easier to understand anomalies as hundreds of thousands of families with incomes below $20k living in homes worth $300k or more. And, the average person in the lowest fifth in income spends twice as much annually as his or her annual income.
W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm, Myths of Rich and Poor, p. 16.
c. More than three-quarters of the lowest 20 percent in 1975 made it into the top 40 percent of income earners for at least one year by 1991. In fact, the poor made the most dramatic gains in the income distribution In other words, the rich have gotten a little richer, but the poor have gotten much richer. HTTP Error 404 - File or Directory Not Found - Dallas Fed
2. The U of Michigan study noted by the Dallas Fed, followed tens of thousands of individuals over a period of decades. Only 5% of those in the bottom 20% remained there 16 years later; during that same period, 29% had risen all the way into the top quintile. And, more than half had been in the top quintile at some point during those years.
3. Then there is the kind socioeconomic mobility in which people born into low-income families rise to higher income or occupational levels than their parents. On the one hand, there are those who seek out factors which inhibit progress, and attribute same to an oppressive society.
a. First, are the neutral factors of circumstance: someone born deaf is unlikely to become a musician. Physical or mental handicaps beyond ones control reduce the chance of using opportunities which may be available in society.
b. Cultural values, inherited socially rather than biologically, may also reduce the statistical probability of advancing, even when opportunity is available.
c. Goals and priorities influence success: one raised in a home where physical prowess is valued over intellectual prowess dictate part of the calculation.
See chapter five of Sowell's "Economic Facts and Fallacies."
