Aspiring to do better than one's parents The American dream promises that hard work and opportunity will lead to a better life. Although the specifics of what constitutes a better life vary from generation to generation, one constant is that children expect to do better—or at least to have a good chance at doing better—than their parents. Chetty et al. show that this dream did come true for children born in the middle of the 20th century, but only for half of children born in 1984 (see the Policy Forum by Katz and Krueger). A more even distribution of economic growth, rather than more growth, would allow more children to fulfill their dreams. Science, this issue p. 398; see also p. 382 Only half of Americans see their dreams come true. We estimated rates of “absolute income mobility”—the fraction of children who earn more than their parents—by combining data from U.S. Census and Current Population Survey cross sections with panel data from de-identified tax records. We found that rates of absolute mobility have fallen from approximately 90% for children born in 1940 to 50% for children born in the 1980s. Increasing Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rates alone cannot restore absolute mobility to the rates experienced by children born in the 1940s. However, distributing current GDP growth more equally across income groups as in the 1940 birth cohort would reverse more than 70% of the decline in mobility. These results imply that reviving the “American dream” of high rates of absolute mobility would require economic growth that is shared more broadly across the income distribution.

中文翻译：

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褪色的美国梦：1940 年以来绝对收入流动的趋势

渴望比父母做得更好 美国梦承诺努力工作和机会将带来更美好的生活。尽管构成更美好生活的具体细节因代而异，但一个不变的因素是孩子们期望比他们的父母做得更好——或者至少有很大的机会做得更好。切蒂等人。表明这个梦想对 20 世纪中叶出生的孩子来说确实实现了，但只有 1984 年出生的孩子的一半（参见 Katz 和 Krueger 的政策论坛）。经济增长的更均匀分布，而不是更多的增长，会让更多的孩子实现他们的梦想。科学，这个问题 p。398; 另见第。382 只有一半的美国人看到他们的梦想成真。我们通过将来自美国人口普查和当前人口调查横截面的数据与来自去标识化税务记录的面板数据相结合，估计了“绝对收入流动性”——收入超过父母的孩子的比例。我们发现绝对流动率从 1940 年出生的儿童的大约 90% 下降到 1980 年代出生的儿童的 50%。仅靠提高国内生产总值 (GDP) 增长率无法将绝对流动性恢复到 1940 年代出生的儿童所经历的增长率。然而，像 1940 年出生队列那样在收入群体中更平等地分配当前的 GDP 增长将扭转流动性下降的 70% 以上。