Creating and sharing tools and insights that provide local decision-makers with the data they need to improve economic mobility in their communities is an essential part of our Economic Mobility and Opportunity Strategy.
Our partner Opportunity Insights (OI), led by Harvard economist Raj Chetty, released new research recently indicating that children raised in neighborhoods with higher employment rates among adults — even if their own parents are unemployed — are more likely to experience upward economic mobility as adults.
This research underscores the importance of what neighborhoods and communities are doing to create economic opportunities for the people who live there. Communities where more adults are employed foster greater economic mobility for everyone. This idea of community is a factor in some of the economic mobility gaps we see across the country.
Chetty and his team analyzed anonymized census and tax data from millions of Americans born between 1978 and 1992 in their research. These results help us identify and understand these gaps but also enable us to work on solutions that increase opportunities for everyone.
Understanding and using data is fundamental in this work but it is equally important to listen to and prioritize the voices of those living in poverty. Combining these approaches – data and the voices of those with lived experiences – will drive us toward meaningful impact.
That’s why I'm excited to share that our partner Camber Collective is elevating the perspectives of people who are experiencing or have experienced poverty with the release of the second part of their Mobility Experiences research series, Americans’ Perspectives on Economic Mobility.
It features in-depth interviews with over 4,000 Americans, including an oversample of those earning low and middle incomes. The study aims to understand people’s perceptions of life experiences impacting economic mobility and how those perceptions align with data and academic findings.
Gaining direct insights from individuals who have experienced or are still experiencing poverty – the very population we are serving through our economic mobility strategy – is an invaluable and powerful asset to have and utilize in our work.
The report is full of fascinating insights and has three main takeaways that warrant attention and reflection from advocates, researchers, and decision-makers alike:
1. Respondents are optimistic about the economic mobility of others but pessimistic about their own economic outlook over the next five years:
- 67% of those surveyed believe most people can achieve middle or high incomes in their lifetime, even if born into low-income households. However, less than half believe their own economic situation will improve over the next five years.
- Economic data validates the reason for concern. As referenced in the report, over half of survey respondents in the lowest income bracket in 2010 remained there 10 years later. Only three percent rose to the highest income bracket.
- In other words, respondents believe everyone has equal access to opportunity and economic mobility, despite the data and perceptions of individual lived experiences indicating that we have yet to achieve that aspiration.
2. The support people experiencing poverty want doesn’t always correlate with the highest-impact mobility experiences:
- For example, 90 percent of respondents view a high school diploma or equivalent as having a high impact on economic mobility, but 61 percent are interested in receiving support to graduate. This could be for many reasons – some people may already have access to resources, support, or interventions, or they may have more urgent needs that make education support less of a priority.
3. Whether a respondent experienced poverty greatly influences their perception of how impactful certain life experiences are on economic mobility more than the overall perception of Americans who have not had those experiences:
- Respondents who have interacted with the criminal justice system are 20 to 30 percentage points more likely to identify this life experience as having a major impact on one’s downward mobility, and conversely, respondents who own a business are 20 to 30 percentage points more likely to rank this experience as having a major impact on an individual’s upward mobility.
- In addition, people who recently experienced poverty are more likely to identify experiences such as chronic health conditions or being evicted as heavy influencers on an individual’s economic mobility.
As funders, policymakers, and advocates, we need to understand more deeply the gaps between evidence and demand for solutions and listen to the voices of those with lived experiences to identify what would be most impactful.
This information can help us all strengthen practices, identify new research opportunities, and direct capital toward efforts valued by the people these strategies aim to help. It also serves as a strong reminder of just how personal experiences with poverty can be, and how a barrier someone is experiencing directly – whether it be lack of transportation to get to a job or not having access to childcare – can feel like the most significant barrier, regardless of what aggregate data show.
One survey respondent put it best:
“At its core, the American Dream is just living your best life. And one of the ways that we can promote that for ourselves and others is through being inclusive of lived experiences in the making of policies and the making of legislation and the making of procedures.” - Ivory
Americans’ Perspectives on Economic Mobility builds on the research in Camber’s first report, Life Experiences that Power Lifetime Income, which identifies 28 mobility experiences that highly impact lifetime income through a meta-analysis of over 230 peer-reviewed studies.
My hope is that the insights from this report can help illuminate the impact of mobility experiences on people’s lives and ways we can work collectively to develop interventions that help those in poverty advance economically.