Getting Ahead or Losing Ground: Economic Mobility in America

Americans have long believed that those who work hard can achieve success and that each generation will be better off than the last one. This belief has made Americans more tolerant of growing inequality than the citizens of other advanced nations. But how much opportunity to get ahead actually exists in America? In this new volume, Brookings scholars Julia Isaacs, Isabel Sawhill and Ron Haskins summarize research and provide new evidence on both the extent of intergenerational mobility in the United States and the factors that influence it.