
Why is the American dream dead in the south? - austenallred
http://m.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/why-is-the-american-dream-dead-in-the-south/283313/
======
twoodfin
I'll repeat my usual complaint about the 2009 intergenerational mobility
survey cited in the article as demonstrating the U.S. has lower income
mobility than, say, Denmark. It's a survey of _relative_ mobility, which in a
society with a much narrower ("equal") income distribution will show more
"mobility" even with much smaller absolute income changes.

Suppose the middle 80% of earners in nation A make between $50,000 and
$70,000, while the middle 80% of nation B make between $20,000 and $100,000.
If across one generation a father in nation B making $50,000 has a son who
makes $100,000, that represents substantially _less_ "mobility", as this
survey defines it, than a father in nation A making $50,000 who has a son that
makes $70,000.

The difference between income distributions in Denmark and the U.S. are likely
not this stark, but I bet it's significant. AFAIR the survey makes no attempt
to account for this.

~~~
_delirium
That's a fair criticism. It's certainly true that given some assumptions about
random income changes, there's more mobility in narrower income distributions
than wider ones without anything "real" happening. I do think it depends on
what the study is trying to show, though, which in part depends on where in
the web of arguments and counterarguments in falls.

One very common argument I hear from Americans is something like this: it's
true that (some of) Europe has lower income inequality than the US. However,
Europe's inequality is more entrenched and hereditary, and therefore actually
worse than America's in social effects, even though in magnitude it seems less
bad. The difference between wealthier and poorer parts of society, this
argument goes, is higher in America, but this is not as harmful because the
divergence is just based on what you make of yourself and changes generation
to generation, rather than being based on rigid notions of class or heredity
like in Europe and persisting across generations. So the European rich man
might only be 10x as rich as the poor man, while the American one is 100x, but
the European has this 10x difference predestined from birth, whereas the
American's 100x arises only during life.

This study seems to show that particular narrative doesn't quite go through:
the U.S. has a larger class divide _and_ it persists across generations more
than Europe's smaller class divide does. The second part may well be
redundant, as you point out (it might only persist more because it's larger),
but that doesn't necessarily make the problem any less bad.

~~~
twoodfin
My point is that I don't think it shows that, and just because the U.S. is
such an "unequal" society. Moving from the 40th income percentile to the 20th
in the U.S. represents a major absolute gain in income and presumably quality
of life. I suspect it's not as dramatic a change in Denmark along either
measure. To the survey, they're the same magnitude of change, and there's no
accounting for the more impressive absolute change in the American case.

~~~
_delirium
But flipped the other way around, the more impressive American absolute change
is only an artifact of its larger inequality. Danes are not moving around
between $15k and $40k incomes, because nobody makes a $15k income (minimum
wage is $38k/yr). So that whole bit of the "American dream" mobility has just
been cut off, with no loss to society...

Relative position also matters quite a bit. In Denmark, you can be born on the
lower end of society, and end up as one of the country's elites, with greater
probability than is the case in the US. I take this as the "Horatio Alger"
myth: you are born to a dock worker, and end up President of the USA, or CEO
of a Big Company, a unique trajectory only possible in America. But you are
actually more likely to make this dockworker-to-PM or dockworker-to-CEO
transition in Denmark, contrary to the myth! Put differently, who constitutes
the elite in Denmark is less determined by parentage, whereas the American
political/economic/cultural elite is more heredity-determined, because the
differences from birth are too large to overcome. I think this question of
which stratum of the previous generation's families this generation's
CEOs/etc. come from has significant implications for society: if it's only
from last generation's top-20%, this produces a multi-generational elite,
which is generally bad. It could well be that one way to combat the emergence
of a multi-generational elite is simply to reduce income inequality.

~~~
judk
Hmm.

Steve Jobs

Sergey Brin

Jeff Bezos

David Koch

Michael Dell

Bill Clinton

~~~
okaram
And it may also have to do with your definition of 'dockworker' ; Dell's mom
and dad were a stockbrocker and an orthodontist; Clinton was working-class but
not poor; same with Jobs (he was adopted at birth, dad was a mechanic, and mom
an accountant); Brin's dad is a Math prof and his mom works at NASA; seems
Koch's grandad was wealthy (I can't find more on wikipedia; it also says he
went to MIT and doesn't mention scholarships, so his family was probably well-
off).

~~~
stuaxo
Koch family were not bad off..

[http://exiledonline.com/a-peoples-history-of-koch-
industries...](http://exiledonline.com/a-peoples-history-of-koch-industries-
how-stalin-funded-the-tea-party-movement/)

------
oscargrouch
"American dream" is a lie rich people tell you so you will work for them til
exaustion, you know: "because if you work hard you get there".. meanwhile they
are in their big yachts, playing poker and laughing at you.. :)

Do what you love... work hard in it because your work is just fun.. make time
for your family and loved ones.. you may or may not do enough money from your
work.. to support your family, friends and the good moments with them..

Of course.. society must support people movements towards prepare them to work
in whatever field make them happy..

If everyone is in the place its supposed to be.. the world would be a better
place..

If you think like everybody else, you will end up like everybody else.. so
live up your own dream.. find it out.. dont follow this sort of hivemind
dream.. this is something from the television/radio era.. where people were
supposed to listen and obey (you know.. the elite)..

Now its the internet era, a era where your interaction counts, where you can
count as a individual even in million-people societies

Have the courage to be a individual

~~~
saraid216
[http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/01/...](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/01/do_what_you_love_love_what_you_do_an_omnipresent_mantra_that_s_bad_for_work.html)

~~~
oscargrouch
This article is full of logical holes in it.. im kind of lazy right now to
argue about it.. but its trying to prove a point it dont prove, and yet.. it
argues about a lof of other things that have nothing to do with their first
statement..

For instance, if we really think in social inclusion, we can reform our
educational systems, in a way it will matter less the individual social class,
and more its talent and its own potential..

So maybe the people that would be real out of the DWYL would be the less
"gifted" people and not the individual in the lower social classes..

And for people that didnt find its own way in life.. may experiment to work
with the DWYL folks.. doing some work that are more manual.. they may find
their own ways like that.. experimenting..

Also, when im washing the dishes for instance.. its a very good time for me to
do some zen meditation.. it really clean up my head.. and i have new
perspectives over things im thinking of..

What i've noted is that, by starting to do one thing that you love (and i do
not come from upper class) , i started to love other things that i do not love
at first..

And in my "past life", where i did not like most things i was working on..
(for several different reasons).. it starts to bitter even sweet things with
time.. and i've stopped before everything became bitter.. myself included..

So no, thank you! The people that created this article can do what they dont
want if they like.. because of the greater good.. you will ending doing what
_they_ tell you.. you know.. the big guys in whatever game you are on..

I believe in organic structures.. if you stop to observe nature.. things are
pretty well organized.. and working very well (we are a proof of it) without
anyone managing it.. everything fits well, and each individual do whatever it
has to do.. there some inherent natural order in it.. we have it too.. and we
can do it even better giving the amount of intelligence we have

------
froglet
I lived in the New Orleans suburbs (metairie) and then Georgia. Neither place
had any decent public transportation. Metairie at least had sidewalks
something Georgia just does not have. I cannot safely walk to any store. I
cannot even safely walk around my neighborhood. Cars own the roads and
pedestrians have to move out of the way or get hit. I hate it.

Luckily I can afford a car, something that I can't imagine living without. I
have friends that have lost jobs because their car broke down and they
couldn't afford repairs. Then they don't have any job which leads to even more
issues.

------
rayiner
Cross-county comparisons are useless without adjusting for race, especially
looking at the south where a major fraction of the bottom 20% are black. This
is a group that faced de jure segregation until just a couple of generations
ago, and continued to face de facto segregation today. Making it just about
the "super rich" whitewashes the legacy of segregation,that continues to
affect income mobility in the U.S. versus Europe. And its something even
liberals are eager to do, because frankly its shameful that in places like
Atlanta, most of the poor blacks still live in the neighborhoods their
grandparents were segregated into.

------
paul_f
I think we have our answer. From the study:

Finally, the strongest predictors of upward mobility are measures of family
structure such as the fraction of single parents in the area. As with race,
parents' marital status does not matter purely through its e ects at the
individual level. Children of married parents also have higher rates of upward
mobility if they live in communities with fewer single parents.

Here's the map of incidence of single parents by region of the country:

[http://www.nccp.org/publications/images/svf04a_fig3.jpg](http://www.nccp.org/publications/images/svf04a_fig3.jpg)

~~~
skybrian
This is tricky because correlation != causation. It's also plausible that
poverty results in fewer marriages, rather than the other way around. A decent
argument to that effect:

[http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/4938.html](http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/4938.html)

~~~
001sky
_It 's also plausible that poverty results in fewer marriages_

This an interesting link, but it is a garbage argument. Marriage as a time
series is just as plausibly (if not more-soe) inversely related to wealth.
People were more poor and more likely to be married in the pre-war years (one
example). Furthermore the rate of dissolution in marriages is also (in recent
times) correlated with increases in wealth (postwar prosperity). Its far more
likely that social causes (both technological and cultural) drive family
structures. Wealth is perhaps a boundary constraint in some contexts. This
latter would best explain recent trends that show a bifurcation (but this is
more ~last decade or two).

~~~
ewoodrich
I wouldn't be so dismissive.

The Hamilton Project has found marriage rates are decreasing across the board,
but far faster in lower-income groups [1]. The marriage rate of those in the
lowest income percentile have dropped almost 30%, while the highest income
percentile has dropped less than 10%.

Of course, these are not absolute values, but I think it's hardly a "garbage
argument" that poverty results in fewer marriages. There a number of other
sources that have similar conclusions.

[1][http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/jobs/posts/2012/02/03-jobs-
gr...](http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/jobs/posts/2012/02/03-jobs-greenstone-
looney)

~~~
001sky
This is quite similar to my comment in the last sentence.

But more importantly, the broad counterfactual that before WWII, broadly
speaking, people were more married and less wealthy.

Furthermore its highly plausible that (so-called) breakdown of marriage (in
the post-war) is correlated with non-wealth effects, such as the sexual
revolution fostered by hormonal birth control and the spread/use of class A
drugs (ie: culture, technology). So, in addition to wealth not explaining
marriage rates (broadly) at the scale of long- time, in the short term it has
competition as an explanatory variable in the micro-analytic sense. Thirdly,
and importantly, the relationship of marriage as a utilitarian tool for
<gaining> wealth is an altogether diferent layer of abstraction. It may be,
for example, that people (in the jane austen era) married into wealth as a
tactic of wealth-creation. Or, alternatively, people are for-going marriage
(as in the "cant have it all generatinon") as a means to facilitate of wealth
creation (or, even: protection). But these are wholly different effects/causes
than the broad relatinships of wealth to marital status. They involve the
precise staus of marriage itself. Furthermore, they may or may not have any
bearing on the develepment of Children...so far, children haven't even been a
consideration in the determinants of marriage (ei, access to sex, wealth
acquisition, weath protection). The status of children may wholly be an
emergent phenomenon (of marriage) or it may actually be linked to the quality
of the principals (absent special instituyional support).

So, in the big scheme of things, waving around macro stuff is a bit hand-
wavey. It's quite a bit more important to look at the micro-analytics and
actually (a) assess them; and (b) apply them to the context at hand.

On that, I think I agree with the author of the linked essay.

------
skywhopper
The study compares numbers who reach the top quintile of _national_ income
levels on a regional basis. It's no surprise, then that the poorest part of
the country has the fewest people who reach the top quintile. I'd like to see
the numbers if you control for regional income differences. How often to kids
born into the lowest quintile of Charlotte's income distribution make it into
the top quintile of Charlotte's income distribution? And how many people in
Charlotte are in the top quintile of national income distribution. I'm
guessing it's a lot less than 20%.

~~~
laurencerowe
Regional income variation certainly seems significant for the single measure
picked for the article. There's more detail in Derek Thompson's article [1]
with maps for both "absolute upward mobility" and "relative mobility"
measures. Even though it uses national income rankings as a base, the
"relative mobility" measure compares outcomes between people growing up in the
same commuting zones. That should exclude the affect of differing regional
incomes. It's broadly similar, but more variation is visible in the South than
in the other maps.

Area income seems to offer a compelling explanation for one local result
highlighted in the paper [2]:

"San Francisco has substantially higher relative mobility than Chicago: y ̄100
− y ̄0 = 25.0 in San Francisco vs. y ̄100 − y ̄0 = 39.3 in Chicago. But part
of the greater relative mobility in San Francisco comes from worse outcomes
for children from high-income families. Below the 60th percentile, children in
San Francisco have better outcomes than those in Chicago; above the 60th
percentile, the reverse is true."

Someone on a >60th national income percentile in San Francisco is going to be
in a much lower local income percentile. That would make them relatively
disadvantaged in comparison to someone on a >60th national income percentile
in Chicago. And if they leave the city for somewhere with a lower cost of
living, even if they stay in the same local income bracket as their parents
they will appear to be doing worse in terms of national income ranking.

[1] [http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/the-
geog...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/the-geography-of-
the-american-dream/283308/)

[2]
[http://obs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/chetty/mobility_geo.pdf](http://obs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/chetty/mobility_geo.pdf)

------
dantheman
I think it doesn't make sense to compare wealth across the nation due to
different costs of living. In some areas top wages are extremely rare since
the cost of living is very low. For instance, the average salary in NYC is
much higher than one in kansas, so the chance of moving from the lowest to the
highest will be higher in nyc since there almost no chance of the highest in
kansas at all.

~~~
ctdonath
Yes. There is a tendency for some to grossly misunderstand the sheer scale of
the USA. We have cities with populations of whole countries, able to support
extremely high wages, and remote sparsely populated areas completely unable to
support any "upward mobility". The South areas being derided suffer relatively
higher populations with no ability to support higher wages so there is no
mobility other than move to Atlanta or the like, which does nothing for local
wage increases. The Northeast has more world class cities to lift the
surrounding counties, as does the West coast.

------
DanielBMarkham
_"...Because the American Dream is dead in too much of America..."_

We are quickly reaching the point on HN that we are becoming a parody of
ourselves. What is this tripe? Why are we consuming it so greedily?

Look, the poor in America today are tremendously better off than before. And
yes, I find it interesting as a hacker to observe statistical data, I also
know enough to know that methodology and meaning count for a hell of a lot
here. It's one thing to note relative percentage differences in relative
quintile rankings. It's quite another to end your article with this over-the-
top emoting.

Come now, is it not obvious that the quintiles area completely different now
than, say, 40 years ago? Is it not obvious that things like public
transportation are probably meaningless when applied to a geographic area this
size? How about the fact that the people in, say, rural Florida in 1980 are
probably not the same ones that would be there in 2010? Does migration between
states play a role? Illegal immigration? Do poor people self-select certain
areas? More provocatively, what's the actual movement compared to the movement
desired?

I love statistics, but far too often we try to beat meaning out of aggregate
information that just isn't there. Then we bandy around whatever meaning we've
drudged up to support our pet theories. One of the reasons I love startups so
much is that to address a market you take statistical data and then _test it_.
That's what we're missing here. We have a lot of hand-waving, correlation,
generalizing, and blame. Not so much with the reproducible testable
hypotheses. A little more of that and a little less soft, squishy social
sciences, please. Otherwise this place is going to start looking like a
meeting of the royal astrologers: lots of posturing and invective but very
little of value.

You guys are consuming this great fluffy social sciences mish-mash and
treating it as if it were the same as recent results on the mass of the Higgs-
Boson. They're different categories of information. All science is
provisional, but the soft sciences are the most provisional of all. Bears
remembering.

~~~
RodericDay
You think HN is becoming a parody... _because_ people are starting to be
concerned with income inequality?

This whole business about the poor having it better than ever is literally pap
produced to assuage the conscience of white collar americans- only slightly
more sophisticated than "how can you be miserable if you have a
refrigerator?".

If you think books like _Better Angels of Our Nature_ , or whatever else
informs your idea that we're barreling towards a bright utopia, constitute
some sort of vanguard in the Social Sciences you're just intellectually lazy.

~~~
ja30278
Whether it assuages the conscience of white collar Americans or not, the fact
is that the poor in America have it pretty good. The average poor person in
America is overweight, not starving, and enjoys a standard of living far
better than most people in developing countries. I have trouble relating to
anyone for whom that isn't a relevant fact in any discussion of poverty.

I grew up poor, in the south, and am now comfortably middle class (still in
the south). In my experience, the thing that keeps poor people poor is an
unwillingness to put long-term success above short-term pleasure. Poor people
buy cars they can't afford; they blow off work to go to the club with their
friends; they have children young. Many poor people work hard, but very seldom
are they working _toward_ anything beyond the next paycheck, or the next beer.

~~~
RodericDay
to what do you attribute your ability to overcome the trappings that keep your
peers down? genetic makeup?

a huge chunk of HN directly or indirectly makes their money from
_advertising_. what do you think that industry is about if not fine-tuning the
mechanisms that get people to buy stuff that they don't need?

------
csense
I live in the Rust Belt and this headline reads strangely to me. My personal
experience is that times are tough in the northern US too. Anecdotally, I've
heard that many of the places in the US that are growing economically are in
the South.

~~~
taivare
I would like to verify this account of the Rust Belt. The manufacturing jobs
that were not exported ,relocated mostly to the Southeast leaving only
Healthcare and lower paying Retail and Service sector jobs.

------
afhsfsfdsss88
The American Dream is a logical fallacy. It has but only outcome which is
self-destruction. How can the normal distribution exist without mediocrity and
poverty?

What's truly disturbing how conservative politics can flourish so
predominantly amongst the least likely to benefit from them[the south].

~~~
MarkPNeyer
you can have a normal distribution without poverty. poverty isn't 'having less
than everyone else', poverty is struggling to survive. the american dream
isn't "nobody is poor", the american dream is "work hard and you won't be in a
struggle to survive."

------
nodata
This seems to be the "upward mobility" version of the American dream. Not the
white fence+wife+dog one.

~~~
PythonicAlpha
I would say, that you are right, but I would define the "fence+dog" one as not
the original "American dream", even when many people are content with
fence+dog.

~~~
nodata
So many people seem to think that that's the dream that I've almost given up
saying anything.

#3 and the Carlin quote from #2 probably make a good point:
[http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=american%20dr...](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=american%20dream)

~~~
turar
Re #3: Were Clinton and Obama in top 1% when they were born?

~~~
PythonicAlpha
The point is not, who is President of the US, but who says what the President
of the US has to do.

~~~
turar
I was specifically referring to
[http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=American%20Dr...](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=American%20Dream&defid=257599)

------
PythonicAlpha
I would not say, that the American dream is dead completely, but I would say,
that it is dead for very big parts of the US people in practice, even if they
still dream the American dream.

------
001sky
_5\. Family Structure. Forget race, forget jobs, forget schools, forget
churches, forget neighborhoods, and forget the top 1—or maybe 10—percent.
Nothing matters more for moving up than who raises you. Or, in econospeak,
nothing correlates with upward mobility more than the number of single
parents, divorcees, and married couples. The cliché is true: Kids do best in
stable, two-parent homes._

This is classic.

------
bertm
I noticed that Eastern Nevada has one of the highest mobility rates according
to this study. This surprises me. That side of the state is one of the least
populated areas and the most desolate. I wonder if there is a statistical bias
at work here.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
It's easier for noise to have large effects in small populations.

------
nilkn
> So what makes northern California different from North Carolina

Did this study take into account cost of living differences? California's more
expensive. There are a number of reasons for that, some historical, some
coincidental, some because of the weather. But, regardless of the reasons, if
you're measuring income on a national scale it is simply far easier for
someone in CA to be in the top 20% than for someone living in a comparatively
cheap area of the country.

~~~
pistle
Boy, when you overlay their map with this one, something sort of jumps out at
you...

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-
work_law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law)

There is no mobility without stability. The south is so levered in favor of
owners and controllers of capital that the poor have no shot.

Double this up with per capita spending on students k-12 and this gets
generational really fast.

------
ChrisNorstrom
An article similar to this one also showed divorce rates being higher in
Conservative areas (the South) due to stress and strain on families caused by:
1) A lack or limitation of contraception, planned parenthood programs, sex
education and abortion options which lead to more children being born when the
family isn't ready yet. 2) Marriage at a younger age when families aren't yet
stabilized. 3) A focus on a family over education and career stability.

~~~
pistle
This whole thread should devolve into the death spiral of poverty you are
leading towards here... you can pick many down-ramps in.

Institutional lubrication for an unmanageable impact due to child birth being
encourage or enforced upon the poor. This further reduces that wealth per
capita of the poor which spreads institutional support thinner, increases
demands upon those trying to work, adds perverse incentives to NOT have more
than a single income in a household, segregation of rich/poor, etc.

Each stressor for those on the lowest rung reinforces or draws them into other
rational decisions which lock the poor into being poor.

Don't be poor Don't be uneducated Don't be a single parent Don't be a woman
Don't be disenfranchised politically Don't be unemployed Don't be short-term-
viewed in financial habits Don't be sick Don't drink/smoke/cope with chemicals
or food Don't be fat Don't be injured without adequate health insurance Don't
live in poor areas Don't work in labor-unfriendly areas etc. etc.

------
alexeisadeski3
A large portion of lifetime earnings variation is genetic.

[http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/46326/](http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/46326/)

------
ableal
When I found H.L.Mencken, I was somewhat astonished at the essay "The Sahara
of the Bozart".

A search will produce the text, and Lew Rockwell has a good piece about it
here: [http://www.lewrockwell.com/1970/01/gail-jarvis/h-l-
mencken-n...](http://www.lewrockwell.com/1970/01/gail-jarvis/h-l-mencken-neo-
confederate/)

------
georgeecollins
I hate when people make a generalization like "the south" to grab headlines.
If you look at the map you can see the story is more complicated. Liberals and
conservatives both do this. Conservatives complain about California, liberals
complain about Texas. But the truth is there are regional economic and
ideological diversities in both states.

------
fractal618
it's dead in the north too. I just marched through New Hampshire with both
liberals and conservatives that are fed up with big money in politics. there's
still time to renew our democracy, but it's running out fast.
[http://nhrebellion.org](http://nhrebellion.org)

------
alexeisadeski3
Regarding the old canard that low marriage rates cause poverty: Iceland is a
pretty solid counter example. High rates of single motherhood and low rates of
poverty.

~~~
fleitz
I havent seen any causational data, merely correlational data.

~~~
alexeisadeski3
The claim is made in the article.

------
moocowduckquack
Perhaps they woke up. No wonder they are moody. I'm always a bit moody when I
wake up.

