Daniel Villegas
Associate professor emeritus in economics
The author of the “Dreaming of the American dream” column that appeared in the January 27, 2014 issue of Mustang News, based his conclusions on a report by the “Equality of Opportunity Project.” My thanks go to the author for directing the readers’ attention to this important project.
The author of the column concluded that: “Ultimately, the inequality gap doesn’t affect mobility from one economic class to another.” However, this conclusion is contradicted by a key finding of the opportunity project: “High mobility areas have (1) less residential segregation, (2) less income inequality, (3) better primary schools, (4) greater social capital, and (5) greater family stability.” According to the project findings, these “five key factors” are “significant predictors of both relative and absolute upward mobility.”
The author of the column has focused on just one of the five key factors: family stability. The opportunity project does find that “measures of family structure” are the “strongest predictors of upward mobility.” However, a focus on just one of the “five key factors” is misleading and an oversimplification of a complex social issue.
Moreover, the author has not taken into consideration the project’s warning “that these factors should not be interpreted as causal determinants of mobility.” In other words, family stability is correlated with social mobility, but any causal relationship is obscured by the interconnection between family stability and the other four key factors, including income inequality.