New Report Suggests the Black-White Mobility Gap Is All About the Neighborhood

A team of researchers using a massive dataset has published a new paper about intergenerational mobility among American children. The basic question is whether children generally end up with higher or lower incomes than their parents. Here’s the chart:

Take a look at the dark blue dots, which are for white kids. If their parents were in the 20th percentile of income, children are mostly likely to be around the 45th percentile: the kids have done better than the parents. At the 80th percentile, children are most likely to be around the 65th percentile: the kids have done worse than the parents. This kind of reversion to the mean is fairly common.

Now take a look at the red triangles, which are for blacks kids. At the 40th percentile, the kids are most likely to end up around the 35th percentile. At the 80th percentile, the kids are likely to end up around the 50th percentile. At nearly every income level, black kids are likely to do worse than their parents—and far worse than similar white kids.

So what do the authors conclude?

  • The black-white gap is almost entirely among men. On a wide variety of measures—wages, college education, etc.—black and white women have similar levels of intergenerational mobility.
  • Among families with similar incomes, family characteristics such as marital status, education, and wealth explain very little of the black-white income gap.
  • The same is true for differences in ability.
  • The gap is mostly environmental: Boys who grow up in certain neighborhoods—those with low poverty rates, low levels of racial bias among whites, and high rates of father presence among low-income blacks—show much smaller gaps. Black boys who move to such areas at younger ages have significantly better outcomes, demonstrating that racial disparities can be narrowed through changes in environment.

As a result of this research, the authors suggest that interventions aimed at improving the conditions of a single generation won’t be very effective. The same is true of policies that focus on reducing patterns of residential segregation. The key is achieving racial integration within neighborhoods:

Our results suggest that efforts that cut within neighborhoods and schools and improve environments for specific racial subgroups, such as black boys, may be more effective in reducing the black-white gap. Examples include mentoring programs for black boys, efforts to reduce racial bias among whites, or efforts to facilitate social interaction across racial groups within a given area.

This paper should give ammunition to everyone. Conservatives will point to the better results in neighborhoods where fathers stay around. Liberals will point to the better results in neighborhoods with low poverty rates. In theory, everyone will agree that reducing racism and improving social interaction between blacks and whites is important.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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