The American Dream Is Built on Strong Families

Stanford and Harvard economist Raj Chetty dug deep into the numbers to ask what characterizes the places, such as Utah, with high economic mobility, where someone is more likely to climb the ladder and earn more than his parents. On the flip side, what defines the low-mobility places such as Charlotte?

Many factors seem to play a small role, such as local tax rates and the number of colleges nearby. Some play larger roles, such as the percentage of religious people and the fraction of the population dropping out of high school.

Two factors outpaced all others in predicting economic mobility on the local level. One factor was a measure of “social capital,” as measured by how much people in a neighborhood volunteer, join organizations, and vote.

Even more important is the percentage of children in a neighborhood who are raised by two married parents. You are more likely to do better than your parents if you’re raised by both of them, but more importantly, you’re more likely to do better than your parents if your neighbors and friends are mostly intact families.

Economic mobility hinges not on forcible redistribution or on government programs, but on family values and involved communities. Anyone blasé about single-parent households or antagonistic to the traditional family needs to explain why they’re willing to go along with a variable factor that consigns people to poor life outcomes more certainly than any other.

These findings also carry a lesson for Trump. The American Dream isn’t dead, but it’s missing from much of the country. The president cannot “bring it back.” Nor can Congress.

As with anything worthwhile, restoring economic mobility and optimism about the future will be a long, slow, and widely distributed process. It will not work if we try to do it quickly, from some sort of centralized operation.