Inequality & Mobility
Income and wealth gaps, economic mobility, and who gets ahead — evidence across places, cohorts, and generations.
7 pieces
BlogThe Toll Booth
College is sold as the great equalizer. Across 6,400 U.S. institutions it looks more like a toll booth: a for-profit earnings penalty, a net-price schedule that bills a poor family a third of its income, and 2,200 counties with no four-y…
AppNewCollege Ledger — Every U.S. College, on the Record
Cost by family income, graduate earnings and debt, and three decades of trajectory for 6,273 accredited U.S. colleges — College Scorecard + IPEDS, shown honestly: suppressed is suppressed, never zero.
BlogThe Places That Beat the Model
A five-variable model predicts neighborhood mobility with R² = 0.44. The residuals are the interesting part: the counties that out-perform their demographics, and the boomtowns that don't.
BlogRaised Poor, Locked Up
For boys raised by poor families, the odds of growing up incarcerated rise with neighborhood deprivation — and, on the very same streets, fall heavily by race.
BlogThe Born-Rich Premium
What does a rich birth buy? The Opportunity Atlas prices the class premium neighborhood by neighborhood — and it varies twofold across America.
BlogThe Company You Keep
Twenty-one billion Facebook friendships, one question: which kind of social capital actually predicts whether poor children rise? Cross-class friendship does. Volunteering, clubs, and tight-knit networks barely register.
BlogThe Starting Line
A baby's odds of reaching its first birthday are rationed by county. Infant mortality across the deprivation gradient.