Inequality & Mobility
Income and wealth gaps, economic mobility, and who gets ahead — evidence across places, cohorts, and generations.
7 pieces
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.
TeachingAn Index Autopsy
We rebuilt a deprivation index from scratch with PCA — no housing costs — and compared it to the canonical ADI. They agree on the gradient and disagree violently about New York.
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.
TeachingThe Slope Factory
We fit the deprivation–life-expectancy regression separately in 266 American metros. Every single slope came back negative. Many small models, one law.
BlogThe Starting Line
A baby's odds of reaching its first birthday are rationed by county. Infant mortality across the deprivation gradient.