One Fix for Greater Social Mobility in the U.S.

Early Interventions

LOS ANGELES, CA--(Marketwired - July 28, 2016) - Richard Reeves and Isabel Sawhill, both senior fellows in economic studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington, dispute the widespread conviction that the opportunity to move up the socioeconomic ladder through hard work is alive and well in America. "American children do not have exceptional opportunities to get ahead," they conclude. Worse, they fear that, "the consequences of gaps in children's initial circumstances might embed themselves in the social fabric over time, leading to even less social mobility in the future."

But the researchers do offer hope. Using the Social Genome Model and its rich data base pioneered at Brookings, they find that intervening early and often in a child's life has a surprisingly big impact. The gap of almost 20 percentage points in the chances of low-income and high-income children reaching the middle class on their own by age 40 shrinks to 6 percentage points.

Also in the latest Milken Institute Review, and available at MilkenReview.org:

Larry Fisher, a business journalist who is a frequent contributor to The New York Times, brings us up to date on the economics and politics of carbon capture and storage as a means of slowing climate change. "Nobody seems to love carbon capture," he writes. "On the left, climate change advocates lobby pretty exclusively for renewables and energy conservation -- the eat-your-spinach approach. On the right, at least in the United States, climate change is still claimed to be a hoax perpetuated by liberals who don't want Americans to drive SUVs." But in light of the narrowing options, Fisher predicts "an awakening among environmentalists that achieving carbon reduction goals will require an 'all of the above' strategy."

Barry Eichengreen, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, reconsiders the uses (and abuses) of government controls on international capital movements. "If the circumstances under which capital controls are useful are clear," he writes, "why are economists still so skeptical?" While a number of countries including Brazil, Uruguay and Thailand have used controls with care and some success, "worries persist that capital controls create a breeding ground for both corruption and distortions in resource allocation."