Social Mobility

Posted on May 15, 2009

My own life story gives testimony to the American Dream in that my family immigarated to the US when I was four-years-old, my parents (with only eighth grade educations) did manual labor day and night and weekend, and affordable access to higher education set me on a path to a very different life than the one I would have had in a hardscrabble farming village in rural Canada.

I do worry that the kind of opportunity and support I had is becoming less available to today’s immigrants and poor kids.  Listen to this excellent radio commentary from the Managing Director at the Pew Charitable Trust:

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/05/12/nad_pm_comment_morton/

The notion that Europe now has more social mobility than the US is a sobering thought.