The American dream gives way to a new reality: social immobility

Mary Jo Vernon embodies the American dream, the deeply held belief that anyone who works hard and follows the rules can succeed.

Yet studies show that dream has been fading for decades.

Now experts believe meaningful mobility may be dangerously close to disappearing entirely. A wealth gap and stagnant growth have made success increasingly an accident of birth - more like feudal Europe than can-do America.

Social scientists are scrambling to learn why. And they're advancing theories: financially divided cities, missing fathers, crumbling social institutions, broken politics. Those long-standing problems now take on a heightened urgency."

Economists, politicians and academics have spent years examining the growing wealth gap among the rich, the middle class and the poor in America. They found that real income for all but the highest earners has barely grown for three generations.

Less noticed is the ongoing slump in social mobility, the ability to transcend one's circumstances and achieve greater success."
* A Kansas City area child has just a 7 percent chance of moving from the bottom fifth of earners to the top fifth, according to a landmark 2013 study by the Harvard University Equality of Opportunity Project.

The national average - 8 percent - is less than half that of Denmark."

http://www.sacbee.com/2014/06/18/6492250/the-american-dream-gives-way-to.html