Unless we see the lives of people within societies as a zero-sum game, we must admit that generating beneficial outcomes that spread over as many as possible members of a society ought to be a desired condition. As social animals, humans thrive when they live in societies where they can learn from each other. It should not be a surprise then, that a recent study has confirmed that opportunities to interact with the right people can be the difference between moving up socially (in economic terms) or being stuck into the class one is born.
In two articles published in Nature, Harvard professor Raj Chetty and his co-authors present strong evidence that what matters for social mobility is not just friendships but interactions and connectedness with socially better-situated people who can serve as role models and sources of advice on how to be admitted to better schools, apply for jobs, and network. Thus, socially disadvantaged young people who live in what the authors call opportunity cities are more likely to become successful adults and move up the socioeconomic ladder. On the other side, are places where such opportunities for cross-class interactions are lacking. These are places also beset with high rates of poverty and inequality, poor schools and single-parent households.
Overall, opportunity places allow lower income people to build social capital, that is, connections, friendships and civic engagement. Chetty et al., however, find that only cross-class connections are what matters for future success. Importantly, the link between cross-class economic connectedness and social mobility remains strong even in the presence of lower-quality schools, racial segregation, poverty and inequality.
The authors find that what endows a place with opportunities for cross-class connectedness is exposure and low degree of “friendship” bias. Conditions of exposure afford lower-class individuals more opportunities to interact with upper-class persons. Such settings can be work venues, social clubs, recreational activities, places of worship and the like. The problem is, however, that even when exposure opportunities are present, the “friendship” bias may keep cross-class interactions limited since people like to associate with members of their own circle.
The power of interactions with the “right” people had been shown even before the latest Chetty et al. research. A study from 2018 had found that poor children who had moved to places where they could interact with successful people were more likely to succeed (in terms of earnings) than children stuck in places without such cross-class interactions.
As with most empirical studies of social issues, the findings of Chetty et al. can lead to different views regarding what is cause and what is effect. For example, John Tamny of the libertarian advocacy group FreedomWorks writes in the RealClearMarkets that people choose the social environments that are desirable and advantageous to them. Therefore, the chances for social success and mobility are naturally greater for the members of a social group (or class) that includes successful individuals. This interpretation views interactions with those one deems advantageous as something of a commodity that can be “purchased” in the market of social clusters. But can we really choose our preferred social groups?
It seems to me that this ability and freedom is compromised the same way some markets remain inaccessible because of frictions and barriers to entry. In the market for social groups the common name of these frictions and barriers is structural segregation. Segregation by race, gender, wealth, ethnicity or religion is a global phenomenon. It has the purpose and eventually the effect of keeping “different” people separated. We can trace a lot of the present-day social and political conflicts that afflict our world to these types of structural segregation and absence of conversation across the aisle.
Because the Chetty et al. study refers to the US, let’s focus on the phenomenon of segregation in this country. Without ignoring other types of segregation, the most pervasive segregation in the US is that of the racial type. Let’s remember that school segregation ended in 1954 thanks to a Supreme Court decision. But that triggered a flight of white families to neighborhoods or suburbs where the chances of cross-class interactions, at least at the school level, would be minimal. Even before school segregation was constitutionally ended, the rules of home financing worked against desegregation. Thus, the 1930 Federal Housing Administration restricted the ability of black families to buy homes in socially desirable (mostly white) areas – a restriction lifted almost 40 years later by the Fair Housing Act.
The sad story of physical and social segregation in this country is that instead of having improved it has worsened. And, as odd as it may sound, cities in the Northeast, like Boston and New York, long considered liberal bastions, are among the most segregated large urban centers in the country. Zoning laws that restrict affordable multi-unit housing continue to be the most effective barrier that keeps lower-income black and white people from joining upward mobile residential areas. But as it is usual in such cases, barriers related to the housing market keep more black than white families out of affluent residential places. For example, black households with middle-class incomes are more likely to reside in poor neighborhoods than white households in the same income bracket. Another sign of deterioration is that segregation of households by income had become worse between 1970 and 2009. That means affluent and poorer households were, respectively, more likely to live in residential places with households from the same economic class than in economically mixed places.
Segregation by race or income limits the opportunities of exposure that Chetty et al. identified as one of the two conditions that facilitate upward mobility. When poor and underserved people, regardless of race, lack opportunities to observe the habits and ways of successful people they have less chances to form aspirations for upward mobility. I would argue that having a window to the upper rugs of the social ladder is the first condition to stimulate any desire to climb it. Having the chances for interaction and connectedness comes most often only after exposure to successful people has been possible and habitual.
So, now that we have the empirical evidence as to what contributes to social mobility and fulfilling one’s potential, our challenge is to create the conditions that will make this possible.
Let's Reason 