I don't think this trend is a uniquely American one. You see this same trend all around the world. It may be more striking in the US but I suspect Health Care is only one reason for that.

Interesting. Studies from the post war period found a fair bit of mobility in the US if I recall correctly from my time reading up on it university. Could be misremembering, but that's my recollection.

study was looking when they mentioned low mobility in America. It could be that they were referring to the mid-60s/70s and later and didn't examine the late 40s and 50s.

Click here (.pdf)

Let me know what you think. I didn't have time to do more than skim over it, so perhaps it's flawed.

Edit: And it appears that numbers for American and Britain are worse than I remember--0.28.

I don't think the primary reason for putting off marriage and having children is significantly due to financial reasons,. Rather I think its a shift in priorities and attitudes.

Since its quite normal to co-habitate nowadays as opposed to the previous generation, there's no reason to get married to do that. People also want to do more with their life before they settle down and raise a family (travel, drive a fancy car, pursue a risky business venture, etc)

It's the parent's attitudes that matter, not the cohabitating kids.

have done any of those things or anything like that. Most of the ones from high school are working steadily in one place and aren't really doing anything fancy. The ones from college are more ambitious and there has been some travel, etc. there--but once again, they're almost unanimously from well-off families and are Ivy League educated.

I don't think your typical twenty-something is putting off marriage just to have a vacation, start a business, or buy a car. And there's an increasing number that are living at home with their parents for a few years after college/high school because they can't find a job that pays enough to get their own place.

The system today is based on educational merit. Get educated you have opportunity. Don't and you will fall behind.

I would probably change the word "merit" to "certification." Get a piece of paper and you have opportunity. It's literally all about the degree--colleges talk frequently about the prestige of their degrees, as if they're a standard product. In my experience, a degree is only loosely correlated with the abilities of its possessor.

Though there is definitely some correlation, there are also some very undeducated people coming out of our best educational institutions. They are then labelled "the elite" and use their pieces of paper to get good jobs that simply aren't accessible to those without such papers. I am technically one of them, but I like to think that I've educated myself reasonably well so far ;).

a college degree is now required just to stay even.

The majority of sociological evidence I'm aware of (I'm behind on the area but I really doubt it's changed) shows that performance in the vast majority of fields is not improved by having a degree. My personal observation is that degrees are used as an ass-covering mechanism by HR folks so they can't be easily blamed for hiring failures.

But then my observation on the job has been that performance, as long as it's not bad, matters in very few jobs. You just have to satisfice the position, not exel.

There are some exceptions, sales being the most notable.

But then my observation on the job has been that performance, as long as it's not bad, matters in very few jobs. You just have to satisfice the position, not exel.

The slackers will not advance in the organization.

begin to phase out of the job market, the educational requirements will change and/or education will become more affordable.

to be willing to work. But you don't need to be competent in my experience in a major multinational. Apple polishing, burning down the house, backstabbing and empire building are all very good ways to get ahead.

Of course, I suppose that's competence. Of a sort.

The broad fields of engineering, architecture, nursing, chemistry, basic science research, teaching, the legal fields, psychiatry, psychology, all the trades electrical, plumbing, gas, heating/cooling.

I find that college teaches one of the most valuable skills, the ability to work well with others, cooperate and communicate. I have repeatedly found that those who fail in the workplace walk around with grudges, lack verbal communication skills, quick to anger.

The ability to shrug off problems in high stress situations, equals success.

I've never found that teachers who've had training were necessarily better than those without. And I'm pretty sure there's evidence backing that up. You'd also be surprised how incompetent doctors coming out of medical school are, and again, it's been measured.

Trades don't count, in my opinion. That's hands on training in an apprenticeship situation in most cases.

Engineering and science, agreed.

But most people don't work in such fields. General business jobs require basic literacy (admittedly, you can't be sure a high school graduate is literate, but that's another conversation), social skills and common sense. Nothing you should need to go to college to learn.

Overall the evidence on how much better people with degrees do jobs than those without shows almost no correlation. In highly technical fields that's not the case, but again, most people don't work in such fields.

You'd also be surprised how incompetent doctors coming out of medical school are, and again, it's been measured.

Amen. You should meet my dermatologist. I'm getting referred to someone else soon.

I will insert here the obvious comment, which I believe will meet with general approbation, that science and math teachers need advanced training (and are much better at the job when they have it).

The others, well, it's very good when they are literate and like to read.

"I have repeatedly found that those who fail in the workplace walk around with grudges, lack verbal communication skills, quick to anger.

The ability to shrug off problems in high stress situations, equals success."

Colleges do not teach any of these things unless its a business school -- in which case four years of experience is worth more than four years of business school mock experience. Moreover, student stress and let's just say work stress or corporate stress is not at all the same. In fact, the idea that extroverted happy personalities are cultivited by colleges is ridiculous. They broaden the imaginative horizons of one's self-perception of personal opportunities which are subsequently contracted once the labour market is entered. In my experience with a major company, success equals the ability to leave behind personal principles, dignity and self-respect when going to work in order to act and think precisely how the immediate superior does. In essence, shallow people succeed in this society.

I should have emphasized "best educational institutions." I meant to say that those who come from the best schools are given the keys to the system but often derive no value from going to college other than networking.

As for degrees from non-elite schools, they do only keep you even.

point.

the middle earners are fighting a losing battle. They may be able to move up and stay there, but there's very little room at the top anyway--only a small % per generation will make it. But there's plenty of room at the bottom... and once you're there, it's very hard to get out. Stratification, here we come!

...United States, there is a greater tendency, inter-generationally, for those who came from the top of the distribution to stay at the top and those who came from the bottom to stay at the bottom - for those in the middle, no downwards bias (as compared to other societies mentioned) should be inferred from the statement.

To the extent that there is stratification, one should focus primarily on the extremes - and I would suspect that inter-generational wealth transfer (or lack of same) figures very, very prominently here, particularly if one makes the leap of drawing in educational factors [lots of folks in the lower income quartiles will be financing their education expenses out of wealth, rather than income]. With increased inequality, depending on what components are making the biggest contributions to the inequality, one could reasonably expect there to be a broadening of the churning middle region, but there's not a great deal to lead one to presume a priori that those differences are going to become more enduring and the middle region "boundaries" less permeable.

"A survey data set containing imputed values should not be analyzed uncritically as if all the data were real values." ~ Graham Kalton

as children get stuck for past parental debt or spend what was meant to be their inheritance paying for the medical bills generated by the last period of their parent's life.

One can strip the estate to zero, but one doesn't get to pass the bill on to the offspring unless they have agreed to secure that debt.

"A survey data set containing imputed values should not be analyzed uncritically as if all the data were real values." ~ Graham Kalton

But the stripping of the estate to zero by witholding care unless the children agree to entail it is what I'm talking about. It may not technically be transfer of debt, but the looting of a parent's long-husbanded bequest immediately before transfer as a precondition of medical care seems effectively the same thing.

The case in point for me was when Oregonian friend's mother's lung cancer ate not only her own lungs but her daughter's inheritance - the previously unencumbered family house - in the year immediately before her death; seeing death up the road, the vultures weren't doing anything for Mom unless it was cash on the barrelhead, leaving her a Hobson's choice.

Morally, she made the only choice she could (I remember thinking "that's the kind of no-choice 'choice' one makes about pets - not parents") and entailed the family house. If I recall, there wasn't even enough of her "inheritance" left to fully pay for the funeral.

At the time of my own mother's death it was legal for seniors to choose to defer taxes (if I recall, in her case it was property taxes) against their estate until after their death.

So the middle region is more highly mobile *within its own boundaries.* I was assuming mobility in general, and since the bottom is larger than the top more of the middle would end up at the bottom over time.

(Edit: Reminds me of how a laser works ;) )

I guess the real question I'm interested in then is this: Given that those who go to the bottom or top tend to stay there, what is the net flux over the borders of bottom/middle and middle/top?