Turns out the Horatio Alger story is more myth than fact — at least in parts of the United States today. EDUCATION and a solid family structure are common denominators for success, the study found.
A child born into poverty in Allen County has a 9 percent chance of rising out of the circumstances of his birth.
Income mobility is more than just grit and determination, is the conclusion of an expansive study conducted by researchers at Harvard University and the University of California at Berkeley.
Where you live can determine your chances of how far up you can pull your proverbial bootstraps.
Metropolitan areas with big pockets of poverty tend to trap their citizens. Block after block of blighted properties interrupted by the occasional strip mall don’t bode well for good schools, healthy retail areas or industries.
Likewise, poor rural areas often lack the necessary resources to attract good-paying jobs or the services needed to help the underserved.
Locations have “personalities,” the researchers said.
If a town has strong and supportive neighborhoods, better than average schools, a middle class that is spread equally about town, and populations engaged with religious and community organizations, chances greatly improve for its children to lead successful lives.
When lower-income families rub shoulders with middle-class families their children grow up wanting to be able to provide for their families as their better-off neighbors did.
It’s not materialistic to want to provide a more healthy and productive lifestyle for your family.
The cities of Seattle and Atlanta offered lessons in contrast.
In Seattle, about 26 percent of its children were able to climb from the poorest fifth of the national income distribution to the top two-fifths, over a 20-year study from 1980 to 2000.
Meanwhile, in Atlanta, only 13 percent could make the climb out of poverty.
The reasons were that Seattle’s poor are evenly spread across the city, its public school system enjoys good support and its public transportation system is efficient.
Atlanta, meanwhile, is beset with concentrated poverty, horrible traffic and a weak public transit system.
Some programs are effective in breaking the circle of poverty.
In Houston, for example, a program called Capital IDEA helps the unemployed further their educations. In addition to paying for retraining, the program helps students fast track through the red tape that often derails their plans.
The format also provides a support group that meets weekly.
The two go hand-in-hand.
In the United States, 41 percent of births occur outside of marriage — a terrible predictor for future success. This is up from 17 percent just three decades ago.
Less than 10 percent of these births are to women with college degrees, while for women with high school degrees or less the figure is nearly 60 percent.
Even for children of two-parent families, if they live in an area with large numbers of single-parent families, their odds of climbing the economic ladder are hindered.
We do not live in a vacuum. How our neighbors live affects us, too.
In southeast Kansas, our immediate battle is to ensure our schools are adequately funded.
Currently, school districts in wealthy areas like Johnson County have been given permission to self-fund certain programs, creating an unequal learning field between rich and poor districts.
The richer districts will be able to hire better teachers and offer a wider variety of programs.
It’s the responsibility of state legislators to ensure all Kansas children receive the best education possible.
Current state funding is $574 million below the statutory amount for the current fiscal year and another $656.7 million for fiscal 2015.
As a state, we can determine our personality by providing students the best education possible.
For us in southeast Kansas, that’s our best chance of giving them a path to improve their lives.
Let your legislators know of your priorities. Perhaps they’ve forgotten.
— Susan Lynn
Horatio Alger would have it tough in SEK
