Today, Cardiff Garcia directs us to Angus Deaton's The Great Escape, which focuses on the history of income inequality and economic development, and shows how much America is not living up to that ideal.
I the piece, Garcia quotes
and links to a study by professor Miles Corak from this year that examines
economic mobility in the United States compared to other countries. Corak looks
at intergenerational economic mobility between fathers and sons. In a society
with equal opportunity, a father's income would have no relation to that of his
son (a correlation of 0). On the other hand, a country where jobs and income
transition from one generation to the next would have a correlation of 0.
Nordic countries such as
Finland, Norway and Denmark have greater equality of opportunity with
correlations below 0.2. Many growing countries, such as Brazil and China, have
a much higher score. At 0.47, the U.S. is in between those groups, but its
correlation between father and son's incomes is still above most other OECD
countries.
Check out how all 22
countries compare: