Notes

For the full, alphabetical bibliography, please visit http://www.robertdputnam.com/ourkids/research.

Chapter 1: The American Dream: Myths and Realities

1. Chrissie Hynde, “My City Was Gone,” The Pretenders, Learning to Crawl, Sire Records, October 1982. Thanks to Harold Pollack for this citation.

2. Richard Ellmann, James Joyce (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), 520. Thanks to James Walsh for this citation.

3. I’m indebted to Professor William Galston for this information.

4. Daily News, Port Clinton, OH, June 2, 1959, 1.

5. The life stories in this book change names to minimize intrusions into our respondents’ privacy, though all of those who spoke with us have given permission to retell their stories. Except for that change of name, no other facts have been altered.

6. She also bowled in a Thursday night league.

7. The generalizations and statistics in this chapter come from a 2012 survey of surviving members of the class of 1959, as well as statistical and archival research into the recent history of Port Clinton and of surrounding Ottawa County.

8. A partial exception is that unlike the women of my class, who (as I discuss later) often dropped out of college to get married, their daughters typically finished college once they started.

9. Statistically speaking, only 16 percent of variance in educational attainment in the class of 1959 was associated with parental education, and that was almost entirely explicable by differences in parental encouragement. Net of parental encouragement, no measure of economic or social privilege had any detectable effect on educational attainment—not parental socioeconomic status, not parental unemployment, not family economic insecurity, not the student’s need to work, not homeownership, not family structure, and not neighborhood characteristics. We have confirmed this basic pattern with the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study of all 1957 high school graduates in Wisconsin, the only other comparable dataset that we have found for the 1950s, so this remarkable degree of social mobility seems not to have been unique to Port Clinton. See http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/wlsresearch/.

10. More than 60 percent of the women in my class say even now that their educational and occupational choices in life were “not at all limited” by their gender.

11. Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (New York: Random House, 2010).

12. On changing racial, gender, and class inequality, see Douglas S. Massey, Categorically Unequal: The American Stratification System (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2007).

13. Kendra Bischoff and Sean F. Reardon, “Residential Segregation by Income, 1970–2009,” in Diversity and Disparities: America Enters a New Century, ed. John Logan (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2014), https://www.russellsage.org/publications/diversity-and-disparities, and Richard V. Reeves and Isabel V. Sawhill, “Equality of Opportunity: Definitions, Trends, and Interventions,” prepared for the Conference on Inequality of Economic Opportunity, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston (Boston, October 2014), http://www.bostonfed.org/inequality2014/agenda/index.htm.

14. I rely on county data when no historical data are available that separate city and county; where we have both city and county data, there are no significant differences in trend and only minor differences in level. On factory closings in northwestern Ohio in the last two decades, see the excellent three-part series by Joe Vardon, “Shut Down and Shipped Out,” Toledo Blade, September 26–28, 2010.

15. Based on student eligibility for free and reduced price lunch in Port Clinton schools, as reported in Ohio Department of Education, Office for Safety, Health and Nutrition, LUNCH MR 81 Report, ftp://ftp.ode.state.oh.us/MR81/.

16. In 2013 I published an op-ed about Port Clinton, entitled “Crumbling American Dreams,” New York Times (August 3, 2013). A subsequent lively discussion in Port Clinton accelerated earlier efforts to begin to reverse the growing opportunity gap in town. By late 2014 the Port Clinton school system was singled out by the state of Ohio for its successful efforts to raise the test scores of low-income third-graders, while the local United Way, led by Chris Galvin, had begun a series of very promising child care and mentoring initiatives. Whether these efforts will be sustained is still uncertain, but they illustrate that it is possible to focus civic energy and creativity in a small town in ways that would be much harder in larger communities.

17. In other words, this book focuses on intergenerational mobility, not intra-generational mobility.

18. Benjamin I. Page and Lawrence R. Jacobs, Class War? What Americans Really Think About Economic Inequality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). Scholars disagree about the degree to which Americans favor equality of outcomes, but all agree that equality of opportunity is a virtually universally shared value. See Jennifer L. Hochschild, What’s Fair?: American Beliefs About Distributive Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981); Larry M. Bartels, Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); Katherine S. Newman and Elisabeth S. Jacobs, Who Cares?: Public Ambivalence and Government Activism from the New Deal to the Second Golden Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010); and Leslie McCall, The Undeserving Rich: American Beliefs About Inequality, Opportunity, and Redistribution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). See Andrew Kohut and Michael Dimock, “Resilient American Values: Optimism in an Era of Growing Inequality and Economic Difficulty,” report for the Council on Foreign Relations (May 2013), accessed August 29, 2014, http://www.cfr.org/united-states/resilient-american-values/p30203, for evidence that “Americans’ core values and beliefs about economic opportunity, and the nation’s economic outlook, remain largely optimistic and unchanged.”

19. Page and Jacobs, Class War?, 57–58.

20. Kay Lehman Schlozman, Sidney Verba, and Henry E. Brady, The Unheavenly Chorus: Unequal Political Voice and the Broken Promise of American Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 55–56.

21. Pew Economic Mobility Project Poll 2011. In fact, lower-income Americans are slightly more likely to give priority to equality of opportunity over equality of outcome. Of course, as many Americans understand, no such choice is strictly necessary in the real world, and later in this book we will explore how addressing inequality of outcome in one generation may be a prerequisite for addressing inequality of opportunity in the next. See McCall, The Undeserving Rich.

22. Ben S. Bernanke, “The Level and Distribution of Economic Well-Being,” remarks before the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce, Omaha, NE (February 6, 2007), accessed August 29, 2014, http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/bernanke20070206a.htm.

23. Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1986; orig. pub., 1920), 212.

24. David M. Potter, People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and the American Character (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969; orig. pub., 1954), 91–94.

25. That pattern corresponds to the distinctive pattern of American public spending compared to Europe, for we spend more on education and less on welfare state redistribution. See Anthony King, “Ideas, Institutions and the Policies of Governments: A Comparative Analysis: Parts I and II,” British Journal of Political Science 3 (July 1973): 291–313; and Irwin Garfinkel, Lee Rainwater, and Timothy Smeeding, Wealth and Welfare States: Is America a Laggard or Leader? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

26. Richard Weiss, The American Myth of Success: From Horatio Alger to Norman Vincent Peale (New York: Basic Books, 1969), 33.

27. Precise figures depended on specific wording of the question, and the charts show some ups and downs, but no evidence of a clear long-term trend.

28. Page and Jacobs, Class War?; McCall, The Undeserving Rich. Page and Jacobs (p. 51) report that in 2007 three quarters of us believed that “it’s still possible to start out poor in this country, work hard, and become rich.” On the other hand, Gallup (as cited in McCall, p. 182) reported that the fraction of Americans “satisfied with the opportunity for a person in this nation to get ahead by working hard” fell from 76 percent in 2001 to 53 percent in 2012. Moreover, a poll in 2014 found that “only roughly 4-in-10 (42%) Americans say that the American Dream—that if you work hard, you’ll get ahead—still holds true today, [whereas] nearly half of Americans (48%) believe that the American Dream once held true but does not anymore,” while “most Americans (55%) believe that one of the biggest problems in the country is that not everyone is given an equal chance to succeed in life.” Robert P. Jones, Daniel Cox and Juhem Navarro-Rivera, “Economic Insecurity, Rising Inequality, and Doubts About the Future: Findings from the 2014 American Values Survey,” Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), Washington, DC, September 23, 2014, at http://publicreligion.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/AVS-web.pdf.

29. Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, “Decreasing (and then Increasing) Inequality in America: A Tale of Two Half-Centuries,” in The Causes and Consequences of Increasing Income Inequality, ed. Finis Welch (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 37–82.

30. Massey, Categorically Unequal, 5.

31. This general pattern applies both to personal income and to family income and to income before and after taxes. The growth in income inequality reflected not simply that some people had good years, and others bad years, but the emergence of the stably rich at the top and the stably poor at the bottom. Inequality in wealth was even greater in absolute terms than inequality in income, but the increase in inequality after the great reversal of the 1970s was greater for income than for wealth. Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, “The Future of Inequality: The Other Reason Education Matters So Much,” Milken Institute Review (July 2009): 28. See also Anthony B. Atkinson, Thomas Piketty, and Emmanuel Saez, “Top Incomes in the Long Run of History,” Journal of Economic Literature 49 (March 2011): 3–71, http://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/atkinson-piketty-saezJEL10.pdf; Emmanuel Saez, “Striking it Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States,” 2013, accessed November 12, 2014, http://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2012.pdf; Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty, “Income Inequality in the United States, 1913–1998,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 118 (2013): 1–39; Massey, Categorically Unequal.

32. U.S Census Bureau, “Historical Income Tables: Households,” Table H-4, accessed August 30, 2014, http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/household/, cited in Jennifer Hochschild and Vesla Weaver, “Class and Group: Political Implications of the Changing American Racial and Ethnic Order” (paper prepared for Inequality Seminar, Harvard Kennedy School, March 26, 2014).

33. Testimony of Robert Greenstein, Executive Director, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, prepared for the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, House Committee on Appropriations (February 13, 2008), citing Congressional Budget Office data.

34. David H. Autor, “Skills, Education, and the Rise of Earnings Inequality Among the ‘Other 99 Percent,’ ” Science 344, 6186 (May 23, 2014): 843–851.

35. Emmanuel Saez, “Striking It Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States (Updated with 2012 preliminary estimates)” (Econometrics Laboratory working paper, September 3, 2013), accessed August 30, 2014, http://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2012.pdf. The computations are family market pretax income including realized capital gains; incomes deflated using the Consumer Price Index.

36. Similar trends are visible in many (but not all) other advanced nations. See “An Overview of Growing Income Inequalities in OECD Countries: Main Findings” in Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps Rising, OECD, 2011, http://www.oecd.org/els/soc/49499779.pdf. A useful recent overview of the facts and consequences of growing economic inequality in the United States compared to other advanced countries is Lane Kenworthy and Timothy Smeeding, “The United States: High and Rapidly-Rising Inequality,” in Changing Inequalities and Societal Impacts in Rich Countries: Thirty Countries’ Experiences, eds. Brian Nolan et al., (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 695–717.

37. Edward N. Wolff, Top Heavy: A History of Increasing Inequality of Wealth in America and What Can Be Done About It (New York: New Press, 2002); Edward N. Wolff, “Wealth Inequality,” in State of the Union: The Poverty and Inequality Report (Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, January 2014); Michael Hout, “The Correlation Between Income and Happiness Revisited” (unpublished manuscript, 2013); Jennifer Karas Montez and Anna Zajacova, “Explaining the Widening Education Gap in Mortality Among U.S. White Women,” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 54 (June 2013): 166–82.

38. Claude S. Fischer and Greggor Mattson, “Is America Fragmenting?,” Annual Review of Sociology 35 (2009): 437. Measuring the growing segregation is in each case plagued by methodological complexities, but the basic facts are clear enough.

39. Bischoff and Reardon, “Residential Segregation by Income, 1970–2009”; Richard Fry and Paul Taylor, “The Rise of Residential Segregation by Income,” Pew Social and Demographic Trends (Pew Research Center, August 1, 2012), accessed August 31, 2014, http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/08/01/the-rise-of-residential-segregation-by-income/; Paul A. Jargowsky, “Concentration of Poverty in the New Millennium: Changes in Prevalence, Composition, and Location of High Poverty Neighborhoods,” report by the Century Foundation and Rutgers Center for Urban Research and Education (2013), accessed August 21, 2014, http://tcf.org/assets/downloads/Concentration_of_Poverty_in_the_New_Millennium.pdf.

40. Susan E. Mayer, “How Did the Increase in Economic Inequality Between 1970 and 1990 Affect Children’s Educational Attainment?,” American Journal of Sociology 107 (July 2012): 1–32; Michael N. Bastedo and Ozan Jaquette, “Running in Place: Low-Income Students and the Dynamics of Higher Education Stratification,” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 33 (September 2011): 318–39; Caroline M. Hoxby and Christopher Avery, “The Missing ‘One-Offs’: The Hidden Supply of High-Achieving, Low Income Students,” NBER Working Paper No. 18586 (Cambridge: National Bureau of Economic Research, December 2012).

41. Robert D. Mare, “Educational Assortative Mating in Two Generations: Trends and Patterns Across Two Gilded Ages” (unpublished manuscript, January 2013). Although I speak loosely here of the two “halves” of the century, in fact the turning point, both for intermarriage rates and for income inequality, came around 1970.

42. This is true even after accounting for the rising number of well-educated potential mates from which to pick. See Christine R. Schwartz and Robert D. Mare, “Trends in Educational Assortative Marriage from 1940 to 2003,” Demography 42 (November 2005): 621–46; and Feng Hou and John Myles, “The Changing Role of Education in the Marriage Market: Assortative Marriage in Canada and the United States Since the 1970s,” Canadian Journal of Sociology 33 (2008): 337–66.

43. For some evidence that our most intimate confidants are becoming more homogeneous in educational terms, see Jeffrey A. Smith, Miller McPherson, and Lynn Smith-Lovin, “Social Distance in the United States: Sex, Race, Religion, Age, and Education Homophily Among Confidants, 1985 to 2004,” American Sociological Review 79 (June 2014): 432–56. For evidence that de facto segregation by education is increasing in the workplace, see Michael Kremer and Eric Maskin, “Wage Inequality and Segregation by Skill,” NBER Working Paper No. 5718 (Cambridge: National Bureau of Economic Research, August 1996). Theda Skocpol, Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003), has made a powerful case that civic organizations no longer bring together people from different social and economic backgrounds as once they did.

44. Jacob A. Riis, How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1890).

45. Michael Hout, “Economic Change and Social Mobility,” in Inequalities of the World, ed. Göran Therborn (New York: Verso, 2006); Elton F. Jackson and Harry J. Crockett, Jr., “Occupational Mobility in the United States: A Point Estimate and Trend Comparison,” American Sociological Review 29 (February 1964): 5–15; Peter M. Blau and Otis Dudley Duncan, The American Occupational Structure (New York: John Wiley, 1967); David L. Featherman and Robert M. Hauser, Opportunity and Change (New York: Academic Press, 1978); Robert M. Hauser and David L. Featherman, “Trends in the Occupational Mobility of U.S. Men, 1962–1970,” American Sociological Review 38 (June 1973): 302–10; Massey, Categorically Unequal.

46. Stephan Thernstrom, Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth Century City (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964); Stephan Thernstrom, The Other Bostonians: Poverty and Progress in the American Metropolis, 1880–1970 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973); Avery M. Guest, Nancy S. Landale, and James L. McCann, “Intergenerational Occupational Mobility in the Late 19th Century United States,” Social Forces 68 (December 1989): 351–78; Joseph P. Ferrie, “The End of American Exceptionalism? Mobility in the United States Since 1850,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 19 (Summer 2005): 199–215; David B. Grusky, “American Social Mobility in the 19th and 20th Centuries,” CDE Working Paper 86–28 (Madison: Center for Demography and Ecology, University of Wisconsin–Madison, September 1986), accessed August 31, 2014, http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/cde/cdewp/86–28.pdf.

47. Emily Beller and Michael Hout, “Intergenerational Social Mobility: The United States in Comparative Perspective,” Future of Children 16 (Fall 2006): 19–36; Michael Hout and Alexander Janus, “Educational Mobility in the United States Since the 1930s,” in Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances, eds. Greg J. Duncan and Richard J. Murnane (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2011).

48. Daniel Aaronson and Bhashkar Mazumder, “Intergenerational Economic Mobility in the United States, 1940 to 2000,” Journal of Human Resources 43 (Winter 2008): 139–72; and Bhashkar Mazumder, “Is Intergenerational Economic Mobility Lower Now than in the Past?,” Chicago Fed Letter 297 (Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, April 2012), found evidence that relative mobility increased into the 1950s, but then declined at an accelerating rate for cohorts born in the second half of the twentieth century. By contrast, Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Patrick Kline, Emmanuel Saez, and Nicholas Turner, “Is the United States Still a Land of Opportunity? Recent Trends in Intergenerational Mobility,” NBER Working Paper No. 19844 (Cambridge: National Bureau of Economic Research, January 2014), find virtually no change at all in relative mobility in recent years. The conclusion by Chetty and his colleagues rests on the unconventional methodological assumption that the annual income of people as young as 26 is a reliable indicator of their lifetime income. However, other research casts doubt on that assumption, since into their 30s offspring from upper-class backgrounds may be obtaining advanced education or getting started in a professional career (and thus earning relatively little compared to their lifetime income), whereas at the same age kids from lower-class backgrounds are more apt to be stuck in dead-end jobs for life. In his mid-20s my son (a law clerk at that time) had an income roughly one fifth of mine, and on Chetty’s method, my son would count as an example of dramatic downward mobility. However, by his mid-40s my son’s income as a senior lawyer in Manhattan was roughly five times mine, definitely not an example of downward mobility. Because of this potential “life cycle bias,” most scholars of social mobility advise restricting the analysis to people aged 40 and older, thus generating the “rearview mirror” problem described in the text. On this point, see Bhashkar Mazumder, “Fortunate Sons: New Estimates of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States Using Social Security Earnings Data,” The Review of Economics and Statistics 87 (May 2005): 235–55; Steven Haider and Gary Solon, “Life-Cycle Variation in the Association Between Current and Lifetime Earnings,” American Economic Review 96 (September 2006): 1308–20; and Pablo A. Mitnik, Victoria Bryant, David B. Grusky, and Michael Weber, “New Estimates of Intergenerational Mobility Using Administrative Data,” SOI Working Paper (Washington DC: Statistics of Income Division, Internal Revenue Service, 2015). If these latter experts are correct, then it is premature to judge the lifetime mobility of the young people on whom our research focuses.

49. Our approach to estimating future mobility by looking at class differences at various life stages of young people today echoes the approaches pioneered by Timothy M. Smeeding, From Parents to Children: The Intergenerational Transmission of Advantage (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2012) and the Social Genome project directed by Isabel Sawhill, Ron Haskins, and Richard Reeves of the Brookings Institution, http://www.brookings.edu/about/centers/ccf/social-genome-project.

50. For a thorough overview of the literature on social class, see eds. David B. Grusky with Katherine Weisshaar, Social Stratification: Class, Race, and Gender in Sociological Perspective (Boulder: Westview, 2014). David B. Grusky, Timothy M. Smeeding, and C. Matthew Snipp, eds., “Monitoring Social Mobility in the Twenty-First Century,” ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 657 (January 2015), esp. Richard Reeves, “The Measure of a Nation,” 22–26; Michael Hout, “A Summary of What We Know about Social Mobility,” 27–36; and Florencia Torchek, “Analyses of Intergenerational Mobility: An Interdisciplinary Review,” 37–62.

51. Massey, Categorically Unequal, 252.

Chapter 2: Families

1. The following account of Bend’s past and present is drawn from a lengthy unpublished report, “Social Capital, Diversity, and Inequality: Community Field Studies, Final Report on Bend, Oregon,” by Dr. Abigail Fisher Williamson, completed in June 2008 and based on nearly 50 interviews with civic leaders, civic activists, and other residents conducted in several visits between 2002 and 2006, as well as extensive exploration of newspaper and statistical archives. The quotations of Bend residents on pp. 48–49 are drawn from this report. The contemporary life stories were collected in lengthy interviews conducted by Dr. Jennifer M. Silva in 2012. For points in this paragraph, see Williamson report, p. 3, drawing on The Bulletin (Bend, Oregon).

2. To the casual visitor Bend and Port Clinton (described in Chapter 1) appear utterly different—Bend booming, Port Clinton busted. In the early 1970s, Ottawa County in Ohio and Deschutes County in Oregon had virtually identical populations (~39,000), but four decades later Deschutes County had a population almost four times (~158,000) that of Ottawa County (41,000). At a deeper level, however, both represent a trend toward local income inequality between rich newcomers (retirees and vacation home owners and the developers and others who serve them) and poor old-timers (manual workers who have lost jobs in the dying timber and manufacturing industries). The cross-site similarities in the relative circumstances of rich kids and poor kids suggest that that class contrast is not tied, ultimately, to a single type of local economy.

3. Because of the housing boom Bend was hard hit by the Great Recession. Named in a 2007 report by National City Corp. (now PNC) and Global Insight (now IHS Global Insight) as “the most overpriced housing market in America,” during 2009 it experienced the largest price drop in the nation, with house prices falling by almost half (47 percent) between 2006 and 2011 and unemployment in Deschutes County reaching 17 percent, but by 2013 recovery was well under way, especially in the housing market. Data from Zillow, accessed February 27, 2014, http://www.zillow.com/; and United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey, accessed February 27, 2014, http://www.bls.gov/cps/home.htm.

4. In the aftermath of the crash of 2008 youth unemployment rose sharply from 11 percent in 2007 to 19 percent at the time of our interviews in Bend in 2012. “Youth Unemployment Rises While Overall Rates Decline,” Oregon Public Broadcasting, July 17, 2012, accessed February 27, 2014, http://www.opb.org/news/article/youth-unemployment-rises-while-overall-rates-decline/.

5. “The Story of a Decade,” The Bulletin (Bend, Oregon), May 19, 2002, 114.

6. U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey, 2008–2012, as compiled by Social Explorer, accessed through Harvard University Library.

7. Jerry Casey, “State Releases High School Graduation Rates,” The Oregonian, July 2, 2009, accessed February 27, 2014, http://www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2009/06/high_school_dropout_rates.html#school.

8. Our account of trends in marriage and family structure draws heavily on the extraordinary work of historical and sociological synthesis produced by a remarkable group of scholars over the last decade or two. See eds. Maria J. Carlson and Paula England, Social Class and Changing Families in an Unequal America (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011); Andrew J. Cherlin, The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today (New York: Vintage, 2009); Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr., “Transitions to Adulthood: What We Can Learn from the West,” ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 646 (2013): 28–41; Sara McLanahan, “Diverging Destinies: How Children Are Faring Under the Second Demographic Transition,” Demography 41 (2004): 607–27; and Sara McLanahan and Wade Jacobsen, “Diverging Destinies Revisited,” in Families in an Era of Increasing Inequality: Diverging Destinies, eds. Paul R. Amato, Alan Booth, Susan M. McHale, and Jennifer Van Hook (New York: Springer, forthcoming 2015); Frank F. Furstenberg, “Fifty Years of Family Change: From Consensus to Complexity,” ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 654 (July 2014): 12–30; Wendy D. Manning, Susan L. Brown, and J. Bart Stykes, “Family Complexity Among Children in the United States,” ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 654 (July 2014): 48–65; Karen Benjamin Guzzo, “New Partners, More Kids: Multiple-Partner Fertility in the United States,” ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 654 (July 2014): 66–86. See also June Carbone and Naomi Cahn, Marriage Markets: How Inequality Is Remaking the American Family (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).

9. Andrew J. Cherlin, “Demographic Trends in the United States: A Review of Research in the 2000s,” Journal of Marriage and Family 72 (June 2010): 406.

10. Representative critics of this traditional marriage, especially from a feminist point of view, include Judith Stacey, Unhitched: Love, Marriage, and Family Values from West Hollywood to Western China (New York: New York University Press, 2011); Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (New York: Basic Books, 2000); Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978); Arlie Hochschild, The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home (New York: Avon, 1990); and John R. Gillis, A World of Their Own Making: Myth, Ritual, and the Quest for Family Values (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996).

11. In the 1950s and 1960s, 52–60 percent of premarital pregnancies were resolved by a shotgun marriage, but by the early 1990s that had fallen to 23 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, “Trends in Premarital Childbearing, 1930 to 1994,” by Amara Bachu, Current Population Reports (Washington, DC, 1999), 23–197. For careful analysis of rates of premarital conception and shotgun marriage from (roughly speaking) the 1940s to the late 1970s, see Paula England, Emily Shafer, and Lawrence Wu, “Premarital Conceptions, Postconception (“Shotgun”) Marriages, and Premarital First Births: Educational Gradients in U.S. Cohorts of White and Black Women Born 1925–1959,” Demographic Research 27 (2012): 153–66. From roughly the late 1950s to the late 1970s, premarital conception among less educated white women rose from about 20 percent to about 30 percent, while the rate among white college grads remained steady at about 10 percent. Among black women, the equivalent changes were from about 50 percent to about 70 percent for less educated black women and from about 25 percent to about 35 percent for black college graduates. Among women who conceived before marriage, the rate of shotgun marriages fell over this period from about 65 percent to about 45–50 percent for white women and from about 30 percent to about 5–10 percent among black women.

12. Statistics for these claims:

• Premarital sex: The fraction of Americans who believed that premarital sex was “not wrong” doubled from 24 percent to 47 percent in the four years between 1969 and 1973 and then drifted upward through the 1970s to 62 percent in 1982. Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell, American Grace (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), 92–93.

• Shotgun marriages: In the 1960s roughly half (52 percent) of all brides were pregnant, whereas 20 years later, only one quarter (27 percent) were. Patricia H. Shiono and Linda Sandham Quinn, “Epidemiology of Divorce,” Future of Children: Children and Divorce 4 (1994): 17.

• Divorce: The annual divorce rate for married women aged 15–44 more than doubled between 1965 and 1980. Shiono and Quinn, “Epidemiology of Divorce,” 17.

• Single-parent families: In the first half of the twentieth century most single-parent families were such because of the death of a parent, but that fraction sharply declined from the 1930s to the 1970s. Leaving orphans aside, the fraction of 16-year-olds living with two biological parents declined from 85 percent in the 1960s to 59 percent in the 1990s. David T. Ellwood and Christopher Jencks, “The Spread of Single-Parent Families in the United States Since 1960,” in The Future of the Family, eds. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Timothy M. Smeeding, and Lee Rainwater (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2004), 25–65.

13. George A. Akerlof, Janet L. Yellen, and Michael L. Katz, “An Analysis of Out-of-Wedlock Births in the United States,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 11 (1996): 277–317.

14. Cherlin, The Marriage-Go-Round; David Popenoe, War over the Family (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2005); Paul R. Amato, “Institutional, Companionate, and Individualistic Marriages: Change over Time and Implications for Marital Quality,” in Marriage at the Crossroads: Law, Policy, and the Brave New World of Twenty-first-Century Families, eds. Marsha Garrison and Elizabeth S. Scott (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 107–25; Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).

15. U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Policy Planning and Research, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, by Daniel P. Moynihan (Washington, DC, 1965).

16. Landmark scholarly recognition was McLanahan, “Diverging Destinies.”

17. Steven P. Martin, “Growing Evidence for a ‘Divorce Divide’? Education and Marital Dissolution Rates in the U.S. Since the 1970s,” working paper (University of Maryland–College Park, 2005), accessed May 12, 2014, https://www.russellsage.org/sites/all/files/u4/Martin_Growing%20Evidence%20for%20a%20Divorce%20Divide.pdf; Steven P. Martin, “Trends in Marital Dissolution by Women’s Education in the United States,” Demographic Research 15 (2006): 552; Frank F. Furstenberg, “Fifty Years of Family Change: From Consensus to Complexity,” ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 654 (July 2014): 12–30.

18. For a careful summary of these studies, see Sara McLanahan and Christine Percheski, “Family Structure and the Reproduction of Inequalities,” Annual Review of Sociology 34 (August 2008): 257–76.

19. An entire issue of the journal Future of Children is devoted to the issue of fragile families: “Fragile Families,” Future of Children 20 (Fall 2010): 3–230. Also see Sara McLanahan, “Family Instability and Complexity After a Nonmarital Birth: Outcomes for Children in Fragile Families,” in Social Class and Changing Families in an Unequal America, eds. Carlson and England, 108–33; Sara McLanahan and Irwin Garfinkel, “Fragile Families: Debates, Facts, and Solutions,” in Marriage at the Crossroads, eds., Garrison and Scott, 142–69; McLanahan and Percheski, “Family Structure and the Reproduction of Inequalities,” 257–76; Marcia J. Carlson, Sara S. McLanahan, and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, “Coparenting and Nonresident Fathers’ Involvement with Young Children After a Nonmarital Birth,” Demography 45 (May 2008): 461–88; and Sara McLanahan, Laura Tach, and Daniel Schneider, “The Causal Effects of Father Absence,” Annual Review of Sociology 39 (July 2013): 399–427.

20. Cherlin, The Marriage-Go-Round.

21. Figures 2.2 and 2.6 are drawn from McLanahan and Jacobsen, “Diverging Destinies Revisited.” “High” education represents mothers in the top quartile of the education distribution; “low” education category represents mothers in the bottom quartile. Greg J. Duncan, Ariel Kalil, and Kathleen M. Ziol-Guest, “Increasing Inequality in Parent Incomes and Children’s Schooling” (unpublished manuscript, October 2014) have recently shown that the class (income) gap in maternal age at any birth has grown even more rapidly than the class (income) gap in maternal age at first birth, so that Figure 2.2 understates the aggregate growth of the class gap in maternal age for all children. Moreover, they find that this class gap in maternal age at birth now contributes roughly as much to the overall opportunity gap as the class gap in family structure.

22. Karen Guzzo and Krista K. Payne, “Intentions and Planning Status of Births: 2000–2010,” National Center for Family & Marriage Research, FP-12-24 (Bowling Green State University, 2012). See also S. Philip Morgan, “Thinking About Demographic Family Difference: Fertility Differentials in an Unequal Society,” in Social Class and Changing Families in an Unequal America, eds. Carlson and England, 50–67. Recent data show large and increasing differences by education and income in unintended fertility: Heather Boonstra et al., Abortion in Women’s Lives (New York: Guttmacher Institute, 2006); Laurence B. Finer and Stanley K. Henshaw, “Disparities in Rates of Unintended Pregnancy in the United States, 1994 and 2001,” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health 38 (2006): 90–96.

23. Kelly Musick et al., “Education Differences in Intended and Unintended Fertility,” Social Forces 88 (2009): 543–72; Finer and Henshaw, “Disparities in Rates of Unintended Pregnancy in the United States, 1994 and 2001,” 90–96; Paula England, Elizabeth Aura McClintock, and Emily Fitzgibbons Shafer, “Birth Control Use and Early, Unintended Births: Evidence for a Class Gradient,” in Social Class and Changing Families in an Unequal America, eds. Carlson and England, 21–49; McLanahan, “Family Instability and Complexity After a Nonmarital Birth,” 108–33.

24. Martin, “Growing Evidence for a ‘Divorce Divide’?”

25. Zhenchao Qian, “Divergent Paths of American Families,” in Diversity and Disparities: America Enters a New Century, ed. John Logan (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2014).

26. Cherlin, “Demographic Trends in the United States,” 408.

27. Wendy D. Manning, “Trends in Cohabitation: Twenty Years of Change, 1972–2008,” National Center for Family & Marriage Research FP-10–07 (2010), accessed April 18, 2014, http://www.bgsu.edu/content/dam/BGSU/college-of-arts-and-sciences/NCFMR/documents/FP/FP-10-07.pdf.

28. Kathryn Edin and Timothy Nelson, Doing the Best I Can: Fathering in the Inner City (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 40.

29. McLanahan, “Family Instability and Complexity After a Nonmarital Birth,” 117. See also Cherlin, “Demographic Trends in the United States,” 408, for slightly lower estimates of the breakup rate of cohabiting parents.

30. Furstenberg, “Fifty Years of Family Change,” 21.

31. Edin and Nelson, Doing the Best I Can.

32. McLanahan, “Family Instability and Complexity After a Nonmarital Birth”; Edin and Nelson, Doing the Best I Can; Kathryn Edin, Timothy Nelson, and Joanna Reed, “Daddy, Baby; Momma Maybe: Low-Income Urban Fathers and the ‘Package Deal’ of Family Life,” in Social Class and Changing Families in an Unequal America, eds. Carlson and England, 85–107; Karen Benjamin Guzzo, “New Partner, More Kids: Multiple-Partner Fertility in the United States,” ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 654 (July 2014): 66–86.

33. Laura Tach, Kathryn Edin, Hope Harvey, and Brielle Bryan, “The Family-Go-Round: Family Complexity and Father Involvement from a Father’s Perspective,” ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 654 (July 2014): 169–84.

34. McLanahan and Percheski, “Family Structure and the Reproduction of Inequalities,” 258–59.

35. Figure 2.5 includes both single mothers and single fathers. About 4 percent of children—most of them from lower-income backgrounds—are being raised primarily by their grandparents. We discuss this aspect of family structure in Chapter 3.

36. Finer and Henshaw, “Disparities in Rates of Unintended Pregnancy in the United States, 1994 and 2001”; Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, America’s Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2013, “Births to Unmarried Women,” accessed April 23, 2014, http://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/famsoc2.asp.

37. “Trends in Teen Pregnancy and Childbearing,” Office of Adolescent Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, November 21, 2014, http://www.hhs.gov/ash/oah/adolescent-health-topics/reproductive-health/teen-pregnancy/trends.html, as consulted December 1, 2014, citing B. E. Hamilton, J. A. Martin, M. J. K. Osterman, and S. C. Curtin, Births: Preliminary Data for 2013 (Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics, 2014), accessed November 14, 2014, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr63/nvsr63_02.pdf; Pamela J. Smock and Fiona Rose Greenland, “Diversity in Pathways to Parenthood: Patterns, Implications, and Emerging Research Directions,” Journal of Marriage and Family 72 (June 2010): 579; Furstenberg, “Fifty Years of Family Change.” Teen births are often a precursor to later nonmarital births, so teen births are worth worrying about, even though they are not a major contributor to the problems facing poor children. Marcia J. Carlson and Paula England, “Social Class and Family Patterns in the United States,” in Social Class and Changing Families in an Unequal America, eds. Carlson and England, 4–5.

38. McLanahan, “Diverging Destinies.”

39. Suzanne M. Bianchi, John P. Robinson, and Melissa A. Milkie, Changing Rhythms of American Family Life (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2007); John F. Sandberg and Sandra L. Hofferth, “Changes in Children’s Time with Parents: A Correction,” Demography 42 (May 2005): 391–95.

40. Timothy M. Smeeding, “Public Policy, Economic Inequality, and Poverty: The United States in Comparative Perspective,” Social Science Quarterly 86 (December 2005): 955–83; Sara McLanahan, “Fragile Families and the Reproduction of Poverty,” ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 621 (January 2009): 111–31; and Furstenberg, “Transitions to Adulthood,” show that a similar class divergence in marriage patterns appears also in many advanced Western countries, though not to the same extent. “Multi-partner fertility” is much more common in the U.S., per Cherlin, The Marriage-Go-Round; and Furstenberg, “Transitions to Adulthood.”

41. Cherlin, “Demographic Trends in the United States,” 411–12.

42. Our analysis of the Monitoring the Future data archive. For an earlier and somewhat more optimistic analysis of these data through the 1990s, see Arland Thornton and Linda Young-Demarco, “Four Decades of Trends in Attitudes Toward Family Issues in the United States: The 1960s Through the 1990s,” Journal of Marriage and Family 63 (November 2001): 1009–37.

43. Cherlin, “Demographic Trends in the United States,” 404.

44. McLanahan and Percheski, “Family Structure and the Reproduction of Inequalities.”

45. England, McClintock, and Shafer, “Birth Control Use and Early, Unintended Births.”

46. Kathryn Edin and Maria J. Kefalas, Promises I Can Keep (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), summarized in Smock and Greenland, “Diversity in Pathways to Parenthood,” 582–83.

47. Linda M. Burton, “Seeking Romance in the Crosshairs of Multiple-Partner Fertility: Ethnographic Insights on Low-Income Urban and Rural Mothers,” ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 654 (July 2014): 185–212.

48. Ruth Shonle Cavan and Katherine Howland Ranck, The Family and the Depression (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938).

49. “The Great Depression,” Eyewitness to History, accessed April 23, 2014, http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/snprelief1.htm; “The Human Toll,” Digital History, accessed April 23, 2014, http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3434. Matthew Hill, “Love in the Time of Depression: The Effect of Economic Downturns on the Probability of Marriage” (paper presented at UCLA, All-UC/Caltech Economic History Conference, April 22, 2011), accessed October 21, 2014, http://www.ejs.ucdavis.edu/Research/All-UC/conferences/2011-spring/Hill_LoveDepression042011.pdf, confirms that local male joblessness in the 1930s had a strong negative effect on marriage rates, and reviews literature from other periods in American history reporting a similar negative relationship between hard times and marriage rates.

50. Glen H. Elder, Jr., Children of the Great Depression: Social Change in Life Experience (Boulder: Westview, 1999).

51. Phillips Cutright, “Illegitimacy in the United States: 1920–1968,” from Growth and the American Future, Research Reports, vol. 1, Demographic and Social Aspects of Population Growth, eds. Charles F. Westoff and Robert Parke (Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1972), 381; Amara Bachu, Trends in Premarital Childbearing: 1930 to 1994, Current Population Reports (Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau, 1999), 23–197, accessed December 1, 2014, http://www.census.gov/prod/99pubs/p23-197.pdf.

52. Carlson and England, “Social Class and Family Patterns in the United States,” 7.

53. For emphasis on other “behavioral” explanations, including differences in sexual initiation, use of contraception, self-efficacy, and the ability to self-regulate, see England, McClintock, and Shafer, “Birth Control Use and Early, Unintended Births.”

54. For the argument that the pre-1996 welfare system encouraged family breakup, see Charles Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950–1980 (New York: Basic Books, 1984); National Research Council, Robert A. Moffitt, ed., Welfare, the Family, and Reproductive Behavior: Research Perspectives (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 1998); and McLanahan and Percheski, “Family Structure and the Reproduction of Inequalities,” 263–64. Also relevant to this debate is the finding of Juho Härkönen and Jaap Dronkers, “Stability and Change in the Educational Gradient of Divorce: A Comparison of Seventeen Countries,” European Sociological Review 22 (December 2006): 501–17, that more extensive welfare state policies are associated with lower divorce rates, especially among less educated couples, suggesting that welfare state generosity reduces strain on lower-income couples.

55. Jennifer Glass and Philip Levchak, “Red States, Blue States, and Divorce: Understanding the Impact of Conservative Protestantism on Regional Variation in Divorce Rates,” American Journal of Sociology 119 (January 2014): 1002–46.

56. Nicole Shoenberger, “Young Men’s Contact with Criminal Justice System,” National Center for Family & Marriage Research FP-12-01, accessed April 24, 2012, http://www.bgsu.edu/content/dam/BGSU/college-of-arts-and-sciences/NCFMR/documents/FP/FP-12-01.pdf. See also Bryan L. Sykes and Becky Pettit, “Mass Incarceration, Family Complexity, and the Reproduction of Childhood Disadvantage,” ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 654 (July 2014): 127–49.

57. Becky Pettit and Bruce Western, “Mass Imprisonment and the Life Course: Race and Class Inequality in U.S. Incarceration,” American Sociological Review 69 (2004): 151–69; Christopher Wildeman, “Parental Imprisonment, the Prison Boom, and the Concentration of Childhood Disadvantage,” Demography 46 (2009): 265–80.

58. John Hagan and Holly Foster, “Intergenerational Educational Effects of Mass Imprisonment in America,” Sociology of Education 85 (2012): 259–86. On the effects of parental incarceration on children’s mental health, see Kristin Turney, “Stress Proliferation Across Generations? Examining the Relationship Between Parental Incarceration and Childhood Health,” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 55 (September 2014): 302–19; and Sykes and Pettit, “Mass Incarceration, Family Complexity, and the Reproduction of Childhood Disadvantage.

59. For a careful summary of these studies, see McLanahan and Percheski, “Family Structure and the Reproduction of Inequalities.”

60. Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur, Growing Up with a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994); Wendy Sigle-Rushton and Sara McLanahan, “Father Absence and Child Wellbeing: A Critical Review,” in The Future of the Family, eds. Moynihan, Smeeding, and Rainwater; Paul R. Amato, “The Impact of Family Formation Change on the Cognitive, Social, and Emotional Well-Being of the Next Generation,” The Future of Children 15 (Fall 2005): 75–96.

61. Sigle-Rushton and McLanahan, “Father Absence and Child Wellbeing.”

62. Bruce J. Ellis et al., “Does Father Absence Place Daughters at Special Risk for Early Sexual Activity and Teenage Pregnancy?,” Child Development 74 (May 2003): 801–21; Kathleen E. Kiernan and John Hobcraft, “Parental Divorce During Childhood: Age at First Intercourse, Partnership and Parenthood,” Population Studies 51 (March 1997): 41–55; Susan Newcomer and J. Richard Udry, “Parental Marital Status Effects on Adolescent Sexual Behavior,” Journal of Marriage and Family 49 (May 1987): 235–40; Sara McLanahan, “Father Absence and the Welfare of Children,” in Coping with Divorce, Single Parenting, and Remarriage: A Risk and Resiliency Perspective, ed. E. Mavis Hetherington (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1999), 117–45; Arline T. Geronimus and Sanders Korenman, “The Socioeconomic Consequences of Teen Childbearing Reconsidered,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 107 (November 1992): 1187–1214.

63. Furstenberg, “Fifty Years of Family Change”; Laura Tach, “Family Complexity, Childbearing, and Parenting Stress: A Comparison of Mothers’ and Fathers’ Experiences,” National Center for Family and Marriage Research WP-12-09 (Bowling Green State University, 2012); McLanahan and Garfinkel, “Fragile Families,” 142–69; Furstenberg, “Transitions to Adulthood”; McLanahan, “Family Instability and Complexity After a Nonmarital Birth,” 108–33; Edin and Nelson, Doing the Best I Can; Carlson and England, “Social Class and Family Patterns in the United States,” 6.

64. Sara McLanahan and Christopher Jencks, “Was Moynihan Right?: What Happens to the Children of Unmarried Mothers,” Education Next 15 (Spring 2015): 16–22; McLanahan, Tach, and Schneider, “The Causal Effects of Father Absence,” 399–427. There is, by contrast, as yet little consistent evidence that children from single-parent families do less well in terms of obtaining a college education or higher adult income.

65. Isabel V. Sawhill, Generation Unbound: Drifting into Sex and Parenthood Without Marriage (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2014), 6.

66. Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Patrick Kline, and Emmanuel Saez, “Where Is the Land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States,” NBER Working Paper No. 19843 (Cambridge: National Bureau of Economic Research, January 2014).

Chapter 3: Parenting

1. Frederick Allen, Atlanta Rising: The Invention of an International City, 1946–1996 (Marietta, GA: Longstreet, 1996).

2. Alan Berube, “All Cities Are Not Created Unequal,” Metropolitan Opportunity Series, Brookings Institution, February 20, 2014, accessed May 7, 2014, http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2014/02/cities-unequal-berube.

3. Robert D. Bullard, Glenn S. Johnson, and Angel O. Torres, “The State of Black Atlanta: Exploding the Myth of Black Mecca,” Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University (February 25, 2010), accessed May 7, 2014, http://www.ejrc.cau.edu/State_of_Black_Atlanta_Exploding_the_Myth_of_Black_Mecca.pdf.

4. Atlanta also attracted large numbers of Asian Americans and Latinos after 2000, though those groups are still much outnumbered in Atlanta by blacks and whites. For data in this paragraph, see “State of Metropolitan America: On the Front Lines of Demographic Transformation,” Metropolitan Policy Program (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2010), accessed September 19, 2014, http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2010/5/09%20metro%20america/metro_america_report.pdf.

5. Data for 1970–1990 from David L. Sjoquist, ed., The Atlanta Paradox (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2000), 26, Table 2.5; data for 2000–2010 from the Atlanta Regional Commission, “Census 2010,” accessed September 19, 2014, http://www.atlantaregional.com/File%20Library/About%20Us/the%20region/county_census2010.xls.

6. U.S. Census Bureau data. In 2010, the median household income in the city of Atlanta was $76,106 for whites, more than three times the figure of $23,692 for blacks, by far the greatest racial disparity among the central cities of the top ten metro areas and indeed greater than in almost any other major American city.

7. From 1970 to 2010, the percentage of black families in Atlanta subsisting on less than $25,000 (in inflation-adjusted 2010 dollars) barely changed, slipping from 31 percent to 30 percent, whereas the percentage of black families with incomes over $100,000 more than doubled, rising from 6 percent to 13 percent. Data are from the author’s analysis of Steven Ruggles, J. Trent Alexander, Katie Genadek, Ronald Goeken, Matthew B. Schroeder, and Matthew Sobek, “Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 5.0 [Machine-readable database],” (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2010).

8. Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Patrick Kline, and Emmanuel Saez, “Where Is the Land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States,” NBER Working Paper No. 19843 (Cambridge: National Bureau of Economic Research, January 2014).

9. This family’s census tract is roughly 25 percent black, with a child poverty rate of 7 percent. It is well-to-do, but it is not Buckhead.

10. Michelle’s successive residences tell a revealing story about how Atlanta has been changing, and her place in that evolution.

• As a preschooler she lived just south of the city of Atlanta. At that time the area was 50 percent black and 29 percent child poverty. Now it is 63 percent black and 53 percent child poverty.

• During elementary school she moved about 15 miles further south. In 2000 her census tract was 40 percent black and 18 percent child poverty. It is now 82 percent black and 25 percent child poverty. She lived there in the midst of that transition.

• As she entered high school her family moved another 22 miles further south. In 2000 the area was undeveloped and rural, 10 percent black and 4 percent child poverty. It is now 31 percent black and 21 percent child poverty.

Thus, her family has moved further and further south in the Atlanta metro area into areas that are becoming blacker and poorer, even as they escaped from places that have now become even blacker and even poorer.

11. Because Elijah’s life trajectory has been so complicated, and because we were unable to interview any of the adults in his life, we are unable to reconstruct his neighborhoods with precision, but they were without exception heavily black and poor.

12. Because Simone later became so involved with her children’s schooling, school officials became aware of her talents, and an elementary school principal in Georgia recruited her as a substitute special education teacher. She subsequently went on to get a master’s degree and was recently named Teacher of the Year in the district.

13. It is impossible at a distance of 15 years and across cultural lines to establish what lay behind the five-year-old Michelle’s distress, although the events occurred around the time that both her parents were repartnering, which Michelle and Lauren describe as the most stressful experience of their lives. Moreover, Stephanie was changing jobs, as well as husbands, so it seems likely that stress within the family was unusually high. Michelle would later be diagnosed with a variety of learning disabilities, which may have played some role in the earlier episode.

14. The term “concerted cultivation” comes from sociologist Annette Lareau, as I discuss later in this chapter.

15. This is not a typographical error. Within ten seconds, Elijah says both that he wanted James to pull the trigger and that he didn’t.

16. This childhood chronicle of murders may sound incredible. However, in 1994 (the year that Elijah arrived as a three-year-old) New Orleans had 421 homicides, or more than one per day, most of them concentrated in the area where Elijah’s grandparents lived—the highest annual homicide rate in any major American city in recent decades.

17. The firm Elijah briefly worked for was a direct sales company, sometimes alleged to be a scamlike operation exploiting ill-educated young workers.

18. Institute of Medicine, From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Child Development, eds. Jack P. Shonkoff and Deborah A. Phillips (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2000). This section relies heavily on the excellent selection of working papers and issue briefs compiled at the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, http://developingchild.harvard.edu/. I am grateful to the center’s founding director, Professor Jack P. Shonkoff, M.D., for guidance and encouragement, though I remain solely responsible for this summary of the field. Other key citations include Paul Tough, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012); Gary W. Evans and Michelle A. Schamberg, “Childhood Poverty, Chronic Stress, and Adult Working Memory,” The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106 (April 21, 2009): 6545–49; James J. Heckman, “Skill Formation and the Economics of Investing in Disadvantaged Children,” Science 312 (June 2006): 1900–1902; James J. Heckman, “An Effective Strategy for Promoting Social Mobility,” Boston Review (September/October 2012); Eric I. Knudsen, James J. Heckman, Judy L. Cameron, and Jack P. Shonkoff, “Economic, Neurobiological, and Behavioral Perspectives on Building America’s Future Workforce,” The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103 (July 5, 2006): 10155–62; and Jack P. Shonkoff, Andrew S. Garner, The Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health, Committee on Early Childhood, Adoption, and Dependent Care, and Section on Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, “The Lifelong Effects of Early Childhood Adversity and Toxic Stress,” Pediatrics 129 (January 1, 2012): e232–46.

19. National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, “Young Children Develop in an Environment of Relationships,” Center on the Developing Child Working Paper No. 1 (2004).

20. Marilyn Jager Adams, Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning About Print (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990); Kaisa Aunola, Esko Leskinen, Marja-Kristiina Lerkkanen, and Jari-Erik Nurmi, “Developmental Dynamics of Math Performance from Preschool to Grade 2,” Journal of Educational Psychology 96 (December 2004): 699–713; Arthur J. Baroody, “The Development of Adaptive Expertise and Flexibility: The Integration of Conceptual and Procedural Knowledge,” in The Development of Arithmetic Concepts and Skills: Constructing Adaptive Expertise Studies, ed. Arthur J. Baroody and Ann Dowker (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2003), 1–34; Herbert P. Ginsburg, Alice Klein, and Prentice Starkey, “The Development of Children’s Mathematical Thinking: Connecting Research with Practice,” in Handbook of Child Psychology: Child Psychology and Practice, 5th ed, Vol. 4, eds. Irving E. Sigel and Anne Renninger (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1998), 401–76; Elizabeth P. Pungello, Janis B. Kupersmidt, Margaret R. Burchinal, and Charlotte J. Patterson, “Environmental Risk Factors and Children’s Achievement from Middle Childhood to Early Adolescence,” Developmental Psychology 32 (July 1996): 755–67; Hollis S. Scarborough, “Connecting Early Language and Literacy to Later Reading (Dis)Abilities: Evidence, Theory, and Practice,” in Handbook of Early Literacy Research, eds. Susan B. Neuman and David K. Dickinson (New York: Guilford, 2001), 97–110; Stacy A. Storch and Grover J. Whitehurst, “Oral Language and Code-Related Precursors to Reading: Evidence from a Longitudinal Structural Model,” Developmental Psychology 38 (November 2002): 934–47; Harold W. Stevenson and Richard S. Newman, “Long-term Prediction of Achievement and Attitudes in Mathematics and Reading,” Child Development 57 (June 1986): 646–59; Grover J. Whitehurst and Christopher J. Lonigan, “Child Development and Emergent Literacy,” Child Development 69 (June 1998): 848–72.

21. Tough, How Children Succeed; Walter Mischel, Yuichi Shoda, and Monica Larrea Rodriguez, “Delay of Gratification in Children,” Science 244 (May 26, 1989): 933–38; Angela L. Duckworth and Martin E. P. Seligman, “Self-Discipline Outdoes IQ in Predicting Academic Performance of Adolescents,” Psychological Science 16 (December 2005): 939–44; James J. Heckman, Jora Stixrud, and Sergio Urzua, “The Effects of Cognitive and Noncognitive Abilities on Labor Market Outcomes and Social Behavior,” Journal of Labor Economics 24 (July 2006): 411–82; Flavio Cunha and James Heckman, “The Technology of Skill Formation,” American Economic Review 97 (May 2007): 31–47.

22. Center on the Developing Child, “Science of Neglect,” InBrief Series, Harvard University, 1, accessed May 7, 2014, http://developingchild.harvard.edu/index.php/download_file/-/view/1340/.

23. Charles A. Nelson, Nathan A. Fox, and Charles H. Zeanah, Romania’s Abandoned Children: Deprivation, Brain Development, and the Struggle for Recovery (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014).

24. American Academy of Pediatrics, Early Brain and Childhood Development Task Force, “A Public Health Approach to Toxic Stress” (2011), accessed May 7, 2014, http://www.aap.org/en-us/advocacy-and-policy/aap-health-initiatives/EBCD/Pages/Public-Health-Approach.aspx.

25. Vincent J. Felitti et al., “Relationship of Childhood Abuse and Household Dysfunction to Many of the Leading Causes of Death in Adults: The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study,” American Journal of Preventive Medicine 14 (May 1998): 245–58; Vincent J. Felitti and Robert F. Anda, “The Relationship of Adverse Childhood Experiences to Adult Medical Disease, Psychiatric Disorders and Sexual Behavior: Implications for Healthcare,” in The Impact of Early Life Trauma on Health and Disease: The Hidden Epidemic, eds. Vincent J. Felitti and Robert F. Anda (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 77–87.

26. Heckman, “An Effective Strategy for Promoting Social Mobility.”

27. Gene H. Brody et al., “Is Resilience Only Skin Deep? Rural African Americans’ Socioeconomic Status-Related Risk and Competence in Preadolescence and Psychological Adjustment and Allostatic Load at Age 19,” Psychological Science 24 (July 2013): 1285–93.

28. “John Henry,” accessed May 8, 2014, http://www.springsteenlyrics.com/lyrics/j/johnhenry.php.

29. Poor kids (<200% Federal Poverty Line): 4% parent death; 11% parent imprisoned; 10% saw parental physical abuse; 12% saw neighborhood violence; 10% mentally ill family member; 13% alcohol/drug problem family member. Not-poor kids (>400% FPL): 2%; 2%; 3%; 4%; 6%; 6%. Data from “National Survey of Children’s Health,” Data Resource Center for Child and Adolescent Health, Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative (2011/12).

30. Kirby Deater-Deckard, Parenting Stress (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004); Keith Crnic and Christine Low, “Everyday Stresses and Parenting,” in Handbook of Parenting, 2nd ed.: Vol. 5: Practical Issues in Parenting, ed. Marc H. Bornstein (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002), 243–68, esp. 250.

31. Jeewook Choi, Bumseok Jeong, Michael L. Rohan, Ann M. Polcari, and Martin H. Teicher, “Preliminary Evidence for White Matter Tract Abnormalities in Young Adults Exposed to Parental Verbal Abuse,” Biological Psychiatry 65 (February 2009): 227–34.

32. National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, Excessive Stress Disrupts the Architecture of the Developing Brain: Working Paper 3 (2005/2014): 4, 6; Center on the Developing Child, “The Impact of Early Adversity on Children’s Development,” InBrief Series, Harvard University, accessed June 6, 2014, http://developingchild.harvard.edu/index.php/resources/briefs/inbrief_series/inbrief_the_impact_of_early_adversity/.

33. Ian C. G. Weaver, Nadia Cervoni, Frances A. Champagne, Ana C. D’Alessio, Shakti Sharma, Jonathan R. Seckl, Sergiy Dymov, Moshe Szyf, and Michael J. Meaney, “Epigenetic Programming by Maternal Behavior,” Nature Neuroscience 7 (August 2004): 847–54. In fact, the Meaney research helped to call into question the hoary distinction between nature and nurture, since licking and grooming in one generation appears to be transmitted genetically to the next, but the epigenetic dimensions of the research are less immediately relevant to our interests here.

34. Philip A. Fisher, Megan R. Gunnar, Mary Dozier, Jacqueline Bruce, and Katherine C. Pears, “Effects of Therapeutic Interventions for Foster Children on Behavioral Problems, Caregiver Attachment, and Stress Regulatory Neural Systems,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1094 (December 2006): 215–25.

35. Byron Egeland, “Taking Stock: Childhood Emotional Maltreatment and Developmental Psychopathology,” Child Abuse & Neglect 33 (January 2009): 22–26. Egeland was building on the classic work in attachment theory by Mary Ainsworth, “Attachment as Related to Mother-Infant Interaction,” in Advances in the Study of Behavior (New York: Academic Press, 1979), 1–51.

36. Yann Algan, Elizabeth Beasley, Frank Vitaro, and Richard E. Tremblay, “The Long-Term Impact of Social Skills Training at School Entry: A Randomized Controlled Trial” (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, November 28, 2013). https://www.gate.cnrs.fr/IMG/pdf/MLES_14_nov_2013-1.pdf.

37. Gary W. Evans, “The Environment of Childhood Poverty,” American Psychologist 59 (February/March 2004): 77–92 and works cited there; Jamie L. Hanson, Nicole Hair, Dinggang G. Shen, Feng Shi, John H. Gilmore, Barbara L. Wolfe, and Seth D. Pollack, “Family Poverty Affects the Rate of Human Infant Brain Growth,” PLOS ONE 8 (December 2013), report that directly increasing the income of poor parents has measurable positive effects on children’s cognitive performance and social behavior, strongly suggesting that the link between social class and child development is causal, not spurious.

38. S. J. Lupien, S. King, M. J. Meaney, and B. S. McEwen, “Can Poverty Get Under Your Skin? Basal Cortisol Levels and Cognitive Function in Children from Low and High Socioeconomic Status,” Development and Psychopathology (2001): 653–76; G. W. Evans, C. Gonnella, L. A. Marcynyszyn, L. Gentile, and N. Salpekar, “The Role of Chaos in Poverty and Children’s Socioemotional Adjustment,” Psychological Science 16 (2005): 560–65.

39. Pilyoung Kim, Gary W. Evans, Michael Angstadt, S. Shaun Ho, Chandra S. Sripada, James E. Swain, Israel Liberzon, and K. Luan Phan, “Effects of Childhood Poverty and Chronic Stress on Emotion Regulatory Brain Function in Adulthood,” The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110 (November 12, 2013): 18442–47.

40. Amedeo D’Angiulli, Anthony Herdman, David Stapells, and Clyde Hertzman, “Children’s Event-Related Potentials of Auditory Selective Attention Vary with Their Socioeconomic Status,” Neuropsychology 22 (May 2008): 293–300.

41. Hanson et al., “Family Poverty Affects the Rate of Human Infant Brain Growth.”

42. For citations to the large body of evidence that maternal verbal interaction with children is strongly correlated with maternal education, see Erika Hoff, Brett Laursen, and Twila Tardif, “Socioeconomic Status and Parenting,” in Handbook of Parenting, 2nd ed.: Vol. 2: Biology and Ecology of Parenting, ed. Marc H. Bornstein (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002), 238–39.

43. Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley, Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children (Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes, 1995); Anne Fernald, Virginia A. Marchman, and Adriana Weisleder, “SES Differences in Language Processing Skill and Vocabulary Are Evident at 18 Months,” Developmental Science 16 (March 2013): 234–48.

44. Greg J. Duncan and Richard J. Murnane, Restoring Opportunity: The Crisis of Inequality and the Challenge for American Education (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2014), 32.

45. Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Flavio Cunha, Greg J. Duncan, James J. Heckman, and Aaron J. Sojourner, “A Reanalysis of the IHDP Program” (unpublished manuscript, Infant Health and Development Program, Northwestern University, 2006); Pedro Carneiro and James J. Heckman, “Human Capital Policy” in Inequality in America: What Role for Human Capital Policies?, eds. James J. Heckman, Alan B. Kruger, and Benjamin M. Friedman (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003), 77–239.

46. Meredith L. Rowe, “Child-Directed Speech: Relation to Socioeconomic Status, Knowledge of Child Development and Child Vocabulary Skill,” Journal of Child Language 35 (February 2008): 185–205.

47. Urie Bronfenbrenner, “Ecological Systems Theory,” in Annals of Child Development, Vol. 6, ed. Ross Vasta (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1989), 187–249; Sharon Hays, The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996); Julia Wrigley, “Do Young Children Need Intellectual Stimulation? Experts’ Advice to Parents, 1900–1985,” History of Education Quarterly 29 (Spring 1989): 41–75; Maryellen Schaub, “Parenting for Cognitive Development from 1950 to 2000: The Institutionalization of Mass Education and the Social Construction of Parenting in the United States,” Sociology of Education 83 (January 2010): 46–66.

48. Scott Coltrane, Family Man: Fatherhood, Housework, and Gender Equity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

49. Various studies have used different measures of socioeconomic status (SES), including occupational status and income, but education (and especially mother’s education) is by far the strongest SES predictor of differences in parenting.

50. Annette Lareau, Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life; Second Edition, With an Update a Decade Later (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011). See also Jessica McCrory Calarco, “Coached for the Classroom: Parents’ Cultural Transmission and Children’s Reproduction of Educational Inequalities,” American Sociological Review 79 (September 2009): 1015–37.

51. Hoff, Laursen, and Tardif, “Socioeconomic Status and Parenting,” 231–52.

52. Hart and Risley, Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children. The three categories of parental socioeconomic status in Figure 3.2 come directly from Hart and Risley.

53. Kirby Deater-Deckard, Parenting Stress (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004); Hoff, Laursen, and Tardif, “Socioeconomic Status and Parenting,” 239; Ronald L. Simons, Les B. Whitbeck, Janet N. Melby, and Chyi-In Wu, “Economic Pressure and Harsh Parenting,” in Families in Troubled Times: Adapting to Change in Rural America, eds. Rand D. Conger and Glen H. Elder, Jr. (New York: Aldine De Gruyter, 1994), 207–22; Rand D. Conger and M. Brent Donnellan, “An Interactionist Perspective on the Socioeconomic Context of Human Development,” Annual Review of Psychology 58 (2007): 175–99.

54. Frank F. Furstenberg, Thomas D. Cook, Jacquelynne Eccles, Glen H. Elder, Jr., and Arnold Sameroff, Managing to Make It: Urban Families and Adolescent Success (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). Although Stephanie attributes parenting styles to race, in fact, the more important determinant is class.

55. Jane Waldfogel and Elizabeth Washbrook, “Income-Related Gaps in School Readiness in the United States and the United Kingdom,” in Persistence, Privilege, and Parenting: The Comparative Study of Intergenerational Mobility, eds. Timothy M. Smeeding, Robert Erikson, and Markus Jantti (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2011). Extracurricular involvement is discussed in Chapter 4.

56. Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley, “The Early Catastrophe: The 30 Million Word Gap by Age 3,” American Educator 27 (Spring 2003): 4–9; Helen Raikes et al., “Mother-Child Bookreading in Low-Income Families: Correlates and Outcomes During the First Three Years of Life,” Development 77 (July 2006): 924–53; Robert H. Bradley, Robert F. Corwyn, Harriette Pipes McAdoo, and Cynthia Garcia Coll, “The Home Environments of Children in the United States, Part II: Relations with Behavioral Development Through Age Thirteen,” Child Development 72 (November 2001): 1868–86.

57. Jane Waldfogel and Elizabeth Washbrook, “Early Years Policy,” Child Development Research 2011 (2011): esp. 5. See also other literature reviews cited there.

58. Jane Waldfogel, What Children Need (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), 161. For further confirmation, see Kelly Musick and Ann Meier, “Assessing Causality and Persistence in Associations Between Family Dinners and Adolescent Well-Being,” Journal of Marriage and Family 74 (June 2012): 476–93.

59. This chart is based on the annual DDB Needham Life Style surveys described in Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 420–24. The question was simply agree or disagree: “Our whole family usually eats dinner together.” Questions on family dinners have occasionally been asked in other surveys, such as the 2003 and 2007 National Surveys of Children’s Health, but only in a few years and only since 2000, so they are much less useful in detecting long-term trends. Figure 3.3 is limited to parents with children under 18 at home and weighted to account for differences in single-parent and two-parent families.

60. Sabino Kornrich and Frank Furstenberg, “Investing in Children: Changes in Parental Spending on Children, 1972–2007,” Demography 50 (February 2013): 1–23; Neeraj Kaushal, Katherine Magnuson, and Jane Waldfogel, “How Is Family Income Related to Investments in Children’s Learning?,” in Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools and Children’s Life Chances, eds. Greg J. Duncan and Richard J. Murnane (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2011), 187–206.

61. Rand D. Conger, Katherine J. Conger, and Monica J. Martin, “Socioeconomic Status, Family Processes, and Individual Development,” Journal of Marriage and Family 72 (June 2010): 685–704, esp. 695.

62. Evrim Altintas, “Widening Education-Gap in Developmental Childcare Activities in the U.S.,” Journal of Marriage and Family (forthcoming 2015), is the source of Figure 3.5. Unlike prior work on this topic, the data in Figure 3.5 have been adjusted to account for the very low time investment in child care by nonresidential fathers; since a large and growing fraction of kids in lower-education households are being raised by single mothers, this adjustment has a substantial effect on the size and growth of the class gap. For earlier work on this topic, see Garey Ramey and Valerie A. Ramey, “The Rug Rat Race,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (Economic Studies Program, Brookings Institution, Spring 2010), 129–99; Meredith Phillips, “Parenting, Time Use, and Disparities in Academic Outcomes,” in Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools and Children’s Life Chances, eds. Duncan and Murnane, 207–28; and Ariel Kalil, Rebecca Ryan, and Michael Corey, “Diverging Destinies: Maternal Education and the Developmental Gradient in Time with Children,” Demography 49 (November 2012): 1361–83. The latter show that the education gap is largest in child care activities that are specifically important for a child’s development at a particular age (play and basic care between ages 0–2, teaching/talking/reading between ages 3–5, and management/organizational activities between ages 6–13).

63. “Children with high-educated parents spend significantly less time watching TV and more time studying and reading compared to children of low-educated parents,” Sandra L. Hofferth and John F. Sandberg, “How American Children Spend Their Time,” Journal of Marriage and Family 63 (May 2001): 295–308; John F. Sandberg and Sandra L. Hofferth, “Changes in Children’s Time with Parents: A Correction,” Demography 42 (2005): 391–95; Suzanne M. Bianchi and John Robinson, “What Did You Do Today? Children’s Use of Time, Family Composition, and the Acquisition of Social Capital,” Journal of Marriage and Family 59 (May 1997): 332–44.

64. Jay Belsky et al., “Are There Long Term Effects of Early Child Care?,” Child Development 78 (March 2007): 681–701; Peg Burchinal et al., “Early Care and Education Quality and Child Outcomes,” Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (Washington, DC: OPRE Research to Policy Brief, 2009); Eric Dearing, Kathleen McCartney, and Beck A. Taylor, “Does Higher Quality Early Child Care Promote Low-Income Children’s Math and Reading Achievement in Middle Childhood?,” Child Development 80 (September 2009): 1329–49; Erik Ruzek, Margaret Burchinal, George Farkas, and Greg J. Duncan, “The Quality of Toddler Child Care and Cognitive Skills at 24 Months: Propensity Score Analysis Results from the ECLS-B,” Early Childhood Research Quarterly 29 (January 2014): 12–21; Julia Torquati, Helen Raikes, Catherine Huddleston-Casas, James A. Bovaird, and Beatrice A. Harris, “Family Income, Parent Education, and Perceived Constraints as Predictors of Observed Program Quality and Parent Rated Program Quality,” Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families and Schools (Lincoln, NE: CYFS, 2011). Methodologists are steadily improving measures of day care quality and methods for dealing with selection bias (mothers who choose higher-quality day care may be better mothers in other respects, too, so we can’t be sure it’s the day care that matters). The summary given in the text is our best judgment, given all the evidence available today.

65. Lisa Gennetian, Danielle Crosby, Chantelle Dowsett, and Aletha Huston, “Maternal Employment, Early Care Settings and the Achievement of Low-Income Children,” Next Generation Working Paper No. 30 (New York: MDRC, 2007).

66. “The State of Pre-School 2011: State Preschool Yearbook,” National Institute for Early Education Research (Rutgers Graduate School of Education, 2011): 9, accessed May 13, 2014, http://nieer.org/sites/nieer/files/2011yearbook.pdf. See also Marcia K. Meyers, Dan Rosenbaum, Christopher Ruhm, and Jane Waldfogel, “Inequality in Early Childhood Education and Care: What Do We Know?,” in Social Inequality, ed. Kathryn M. Neckerman (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2004).

67. Keith Crnic and Christine Low, “Everyday Stresses and Parenting,” in Handbook of Parenting, 2nd ed.: Vol. 5: Practical Issues in Parenting, ed. Bornstein, 243–68; Deater-Deckard, Parenting Stress, and sources cited there.

68. Figure 3.6 is based on DDB Needham Life Style data. Financial anxiety is measured by four agree-disagree statements: “No matter how fast our income goes up, we never seem to get ahead” (agree); “Our family is too heavily in debt today” (agree); “We have more to spend on extras than most of our neighbors do” (disagree); and “Our family income is high enough to satisfy nearly all our important desires” (disagree). Those who rank in the top quartile on this composite index across all years and respondents are shown as “high” in Figure 3.6.

69. This observation was made during a private meeting between the author, President and Mrs. Bush, and the president’s senior advisors in March 2007.

70. Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir, Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much (New York: Times Books, 2013), 156.

71. Rand D. Conger and Glen H. Elder, “Families in Troubled Times: The Iowa Youth and Families Project,” in Families in Troubled Times, eds. Conger and Elder, 3–21; Miriam R. Linver, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, and Dafina E. Kohen, “Family Processes as Pathways from Income to Young Children’s Development,” Developmental Psychology 38 (September 2002): 719–34; Elizabeth T. Gershoff et al., “Income Is Not Enough: Incorporating Material Hardship into Models of Income Associations with Parenting and Child Development,” Child Development 78 (January 2007): 70–95; Rand D. Conger and Brent M. Donnellan, “An Interactionist Perspective on the Socioeconomic Context of Human Development,” Annual Review of Psychology 58 (2007): 175–99; Rand D. Conger, Katherine J. Conger, and Monica J. Martin, “Socioeconomic Status, Family Processes, and Individual Development,” Journal of Marriage and Family 72 (June 2010): 685–704, esp. 693.

72. Marsha Weinraub, Danielle L. Horvath, and Marcy B. Gringlas, “Single Parenthood,” in Handbook of Parenting, 2nd ed.: Vol. 3: Being and Becoming a Parent, ed. Marc H. Bornstein (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002), 109–40; E. Mavis Hetherington and Margaret Stanley-Hagan, “Parenting in Divorced and Remarried Families,” in Handbook of Parenting, 2nd ed.: Vol. 3: Being and Becoming a Parent, ed. Bornstein, 287–315; Sarah McLanahan and Christine Percheski, “Family Structure and the Reproduction of Inequalities,” Annual Review of Sociology 34 (2008): 268. See also cites in Greg J. Duncan, Kjetil Telle, Kathleen M. Ziol-Guest, and Ariel Kalil, “Economic Deprivation in Early Childhood and Adult Attainment: Comparative Evidence from Norwegian Registry Data and the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics,” in Persistence, Privilege, and Parenting: The Comparative Study of Intergenerational Mobility, eds. Timothy M. Smeeding, Robert Erikson, and Markus Jantti (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2011), 212; Ariel Kalil, Rebecca Ryan, and Elise Chor, “Time Investments in Children Across Family Structures,” ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 654 (July 2014): 150–68.

73. Teresa Toguchi Swartz, “Intergenerational Family Relations in Adulthood: Patterns, Variations, and Implications in the Contemporary United States,” Annual Review of Sociology 35 (2009): 191–212. For trends on grandparents raising grandchildren, see Gretchen Livingston and Kim Parker, “Since the Start of the Great Recession, More Children Raised by Grandparents,” Pew Research Social and Demographic Trends (September 9, 2010), accessed May 13, 2014, http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2010/09/09/since-the-start-of-the-great-recession-more-children-raised-by-grandparents/; Gretchen Livingston, “At Grandmother’s House We Stay,” Pew Research Social and Demographic Trends (September 4, 2013), accessed May 13, 2014, http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/09/04/at-grandmothers-house-we-stay/; Ye Luo, Tracey A. LaPierre, Mary Elizabeth Hughes, and Linda J. Waite, “Grandparents Providing Care to Grandchildren: A Population-Based Study of Continuity and Change,” Journal of Family Issues 33 (September 2012): 1143; and Rachel E. Dunifon, Kathleen M. Ziol-Guest, and Kimberly Kopko, “Grandparent Coresidence and Family Well-Being: Implications for Research and Policy,” ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 654 (July 2014): 110–26.

74. David Elkind, The Hurried Child: Growing Up Too Fast Too Soon (Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 2001); Paul Tough, How Children Succeed.

75. Gary Evans, “The Environment of Childhood Poverty,” American Psychologist 59 (2004): 77–92.

76. Hanson et al., “Family Poverty Affects the Rate of Human Infant Brain Growth”; Greg J. Duncan and Richard J. Murnane, Restoring Opportunity: The Crisis of Inequality and the Challenge for American Education (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2014), 30 and the sources cited there.

Chapter 4: Schooling

1. Demographic data from U.S. Census Bureau, as compiled by Social Explorer, accessed through Harvard University Library; Gustavo Arellano, Orange County: A Personal History (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 13.

2. Orange County Community Indicators Project, Orange County Community Indicators 2013 (Irvine, CA: 2013), accessed June 16, 2014, www.ocgov.com/about/infooc/facts/indicators.

3. Adam Nagourney, “Orange County Is No Longer Nixon Country,” New York Times, August 29, 2010, accessed June 16, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/us/politics/30orange.html.

4. “Street Gangs in Santa Ana, CA,” Streetgangs.com, accessed June 16, 2014, http://www.streetgangs.com/cities/santaana#sthash.rnESeLn4.dpbs.

5. U.S. Census Bureau, from Steven Ruggles, J. Trent Alexander, Katie Genadek, Ronald Goeken, Matthew B. Schroeder, and Matthew Sobek. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 5.0 [Machine-readable database] (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2010).

6. All members of these two families are American citizens and all the children are native-born. Undocumented immigrants and their children obviously face additional challenges.

7. Fermin Leal and Scott Martindale, “OC’s Best Public High Schools, 2012,” Orange County Register, May 25, 2014, database accessed February 24, 2014, http://www.ocregister.com/articles/high-331705-college-schools.html?data=1&appSession=530132967931354. Rankings are generated from data taken from the California Department of Education. Calculations applied by the Register. Academics represent 50 percent of the school’s rank, College and Career Prep 25 percent, and Environment 25 percent.

8. Hispanics in this neighborhood have a median household income of nearly $115,000, compared to $105,000 for their non-Hispanic neighbors. Fewer than 5 percent of the kids in this census tract are below the poverty line. All data from U.S. Census Bureau as compiled by Social Explorer, accessed through Harvard University Library.

9. Clara was also a star athlete, so she was able to support her college education in part with fellowship aid, as well as her part-time earnings as a coach and referee.

10. Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics, accessed November 18, 2014, http://www.ucrdatatool.gov/Search/Crime/Local/RunCrimeTrendsInOneVarLarge.cfm.

11. Another young woman from a nearby high school echoed these descriptions of drugs and violence in classrooms and teachers whose lessons consisted of copying sentences out of tattered textbooks.

12. These two schools are not absolutely the extremes. As measured by the California state Academic Performance Index, Troy ranks at the 90th percentile and Santa Ana at the 20th percentile.

13. Horace Mann, Twelfth Annual Report of Horace Mann as Secretary of Massachusetts State Board of Education (Boston: Dutton & Wentworth, 1848). On the Common School movement, see David Tyack, “The Common School and American Society: A Reappraisal,” History of Education Quarterly 26 (Summer 1986): 301–6; Joel Spring, The American School, 1642–2004, 6th ed. (New York: McGraw Hill, 2005); Sarah Mondale and Sarah B. Patton, eds., School: The Story of American Public Education (Boston: Beacon, 2002); and Michael B. Katz, The Irony of Early School Reform: Educational Innovation in Mid-Nineteenth Century Massachusetts (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968).

14. Claudia Goldin, “America’s Graduation from High School: The Evolution and Spread of Secondary Schooling in the Twentieth Century,” Journal of Economic History 58 (June 1998): 345–74; Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, The Race Between Education and Technology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008).

15. Scholars debate in detail both the goals and the consequences of these reforms. Leading voices include Edward Danforth Eddy, Colleges for Our Land and Time: The Land-Grant Idea in American Education (New York: Harper, 1957); Mary Jean Bowman, “The Land-Grant Colleges and Universities in Human-Resource Development,” Journal of Economic History (December 1962): 523–46; Colin Burke, American Collegiate Populations: A Test of the Traditional View (New York: New York University Press, 1982); Harold M. Hyman, American Singularity: The 1787 Northwest Ordinance, the 1862 Homestead and Morrill Acts, and the 1944 GI Bill (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008); Suzanne Mettler, Soldiers to Citizens: The G.I. Bill and the Making of the Greatest Generation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Glenn C. Altschuler and Stuart M. Blumin, The GI Bill: A New Deal for Veterans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); and John R. Thelin, A History of American Higher Education (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011).

16. David F. Labaree, “Public Goods, Private Goods: The American Struggle over Educational Goals,” American Educational Research Journal 34 (Spring 1997): 39–81.

17. Sean F. Reardon, “The Widening Academic Achievement Gap Between the Rich and the Poor: New Evidence and Possible Explanations,” in Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances, eds. Greg J. Duncan and Richard M. Murnane (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2011). In contrast to many other measures of child development that I report in this book, Reardon finds that the growth of the class gap is most marked when class is defined in terms of parents’ income, not parents’ education, though the gap by parental education remains larger than the gap by parental income. The evidence summarized here refers to differences between kids from the 90th percentile of family income and the 10th percentile.

18. For an extensive discussion of the role of cognitive skills (as measured by achievement test scores) and noncognitive skills in predicting adult outcomes, see James J. Heckman, “Schools, Skills, and Synapses,” Economic Inquiry 46 (July 2008): 289–324 and the sources cited there.

19. James J. Heckman, “Promoting Social Mobility,” Boston Review, September 1, 2012, accessed June 16, 2014, http://www.bostonreview.net/forum/promoting-social-mobility-james-heckman. Heckman adds, “A similar pattern appears for socio-emotional skills. One measure of the development of these skills is the ‘anti-social score’—a measure of behavior problems. Once more, gaps open up early and persist. Again, unequal schools do not account for much of this pattern.” Greg J. Duncan and Katherine Magnuson, “The Nature and Impact of Early Achievement Skills, Attention Skills, and Behavior Problems,” in Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances, eds. Duncan and Murnane, 57, however, suggest that class gaps in attention and behavior problems do grow during the elementary school years.

20. The summertime widening appears for class gaps, but not for racial gaps. David T. Burkam, Douglas D. Ready, Valerie E. Lee, and Laura F. LoGerfo, “Social-Class Differences in Summer Learning Between Kindergarten and First Grade: Model Specification and Estimation,” Sociology of Education 77 (January 2004): 1–31; Douglas B. Downey, Paul T. von Hippel, and Beckett A. Broh, “Are Schools the Great Equalizer? Cognitive Inequality During the Summer Months and the School Year,” American Sociological Review 69 (October 2004): 613–35; Dennis J. Condron, “Social Class, School and Non-School Environments, and Black/White Inequalities in Children’s Learning,” American Sociological Review 74 (October 2009): 683–708; David T. Burkam, “Educational Inequality and Children: The Preschool and Early School Years,” in The Economics of Inequality, Poverty, and Discrimination in the 21st Century, ed. Robert S. Rycroft (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2013), 381–97; Seth Gershenson, “Do Summer Time-Use Gaps Vary by Socioeconomic Status?,” American Educational Research Journal 50 (December 2013): 1219–48; Flavio Cunha and James Heckman, “The Technology of Skill Formation,” American Economic Review 97 (May 2007): 31–47; Heckman, “Promoting Social Mobility.”

21. Kendra Bischoff and Sean F. Reardon, “Residential Segregation by Income, 1970–2009,” in Diversity and Disparities: America Enters a New Century, ed. John Logan (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2014), https://www.russellsage.org/publications/diversity-and-disparities.

22. Joseph G. Altonji and Richard K. Mansfield, “The Role of Family, School, and Community Characteristics in Inequality in Education and Labor-Market Outcomes,” in Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances, eds. Duncan and Murnane, 339–58. James E. Ryan, Five Miles Away, a World Apart: One City, Two Schools, and the Story of Educational Opportunity in Modern America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), reports that most children attend their neighborhood school, and even participants in school choice programs usually attend nearby schools.

23. Annette Lareau and Kimberly Goyette, eds., Choosing Homes, Choosing Schools: Residential Segregation and the Search for a Good School (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2014).

24. Jonathan Rothwell, “Housing Costs, Zoning, and Access to High-Scoring Schools,” Brookings Institution (April 2012). Other estimates of the good schools bonus in housing prices are substantial. See Sandra E. Black and Stephen Machin, “Housing Valuations of School Performance,” in Handbook of the Economics of Education, vol. 3, eds. Eric Hanushek, Stephen Machin, and Ludger Woessmann (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2011), 485–519, accessed June 16, 2014, http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:educhp:3–10.

25. David M. Brasington and Donald R. Haurin, “Parents, Peers, or School Inputs: Which Components of School Outcomes Are Capitalized into House Value?,” Regional Science and Urban Economics 39 (September 2009): 523–29.

26. Lareau and Goyette, eds., Choosing Homes, Choosing Schools. For conflicting views on whether school choice narrows class and racial gaps, see Mark Schneider, Paul Teske, and Melissa Marschall, Choosing Schools: Consumer Choice and the Quality of American Schools (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); Tomeka M. Davis, “School Choice and Segregation: ‘Tracking’ Racial Equity in Magnet Schools,” Education and Urban Society 46 (June 2014): 399–433.

27. Jaap Dronkers and Rolf van der Velden, “Positive but Also Negative Effects of Ethnic Diversity in Schools on Educational Performance? An Empirical Test Using PISA Data,” in Integration and Inequality in Educational Institutions, Michael Windzio, ed. (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013), 71–98 and the works cited there.

28. Useful entryways to the massive literature on this topic include James S. Coleman et al., Equality of Educational Opportunity (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health, Education & Welfare, Office of Education, OE-38001, and supplement, 1966), 325; Gary Orfield and Susan E. Eaton, Dismantling Desegregation (New York: New Press, 1996); Claude S. Fischer et al., Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); Richard D. Kahlenberg, “Economic School Integration,” in The End of Desegregation, eds. Stephen J. Caldas and Carl L. Bankston III (Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science, 2003), esp. 153–55; Russell W. Rumberger and Gregory J. Palardy, “Does Segregation Still Matter? The Impact of Student Composition on Academic Achievement in High School,” The Teachers College Record 107 (September 2005): 1999–2045; John R. Logan, Elisabeta Minca, and Sinem Adar, “The Geography of Inequality: Why Separate Means Unequal in American Public Schools,” Sociology of Education 85 (July 2012): 287–301; and for a comprehensive recent overview, Gregory J. Palardy, “High School Socioeconomic Segregation and Student Attainment,” American Educational Research Journal 50 (August 2013): 714–54. Reyn van Ewijk and Peter Sleegers, “The Effect of Peer Socioeconomic Status on Student Achievement: A Meta-Analysis,” Educational Research Review 5 (June 2010): 134–50, found that the effect of the socioeconomic composition of a child’s classroom on his or her test scores is twice as large as the effect of the socioeconomic composition of his or her school. This entire line of research was stimulated in the 1960s by concerns about the effects of racial segregation, and in that era class segregation heavily overlapped with racial segregation. During the past half century, however, class segregation has grown, while racial segregation has diminished, and it is now possible to compare the adverse effects of racial and class segregation. While racial segregation continues to be a major national problem, virtually all relevant studies have concluded that class segregation is at least as pernicious in its effects on student achievement. See Richard D. Kahlenberg, “Socioeconomic School Integration,” North Carolina Law Review 85 (June 2007): 1545–94.

29. As with any discussion of contextual effects, this literature is fraught with methodological issues, especially selection bias. For example, since poor kids are not randomly assigned to schools, something about those who end up in high-income schools may predispose them to higher achievement, quite apart from the schools or their fellow students. Douglas Lee Lauen and S. Michael Gaddis, “Exposure to Classroom Poverty and Test Score Achievement: Contextual Effects or Selection?,” American Journal of Sociology 118 (January 2013): 943–79. One recent study that addresses such concerns still finds a significant effect of school socioeconomic composition: Victor Lavy, Olmo Silma, and Felix Weinhardt, “The Good, the Bad, and the Average: Evidence on the Scale and Nature of Ability Peer Effects in Schools,” NBER Working Paper No. 15600 (Cambridge: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2009).

30. The literature on school finance is massive and fraught with many controversies. Compare Eric A. Hanushek and Alfred A. Lindseth, Schoolhouses, Courthouses, and Statehouses: Solving the Funding-Achievement Puzzle in America’s Public Schools (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009); and Rob Greenwald, Larry V. Hedges, and Richard D. Laine, “The Effect of School Resources on Student Achievement,” Review of Educational Research 66 (Autumn 1996): 361–96.

31. Eric A. Hanushek, John F. Kain, and Steven G. Rivkin, “Why Public Schools Lose Teachers,” Journal of Human Resources 39 (Spring 2004): 326–54.

32. Based on unpublished analyses by Carl Frederick of 2011–2012 data on school quality measures for 85 percent of all public K–8 and high schools in the country, as compiled and published in 2014 by the Office of Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education, available at http://ocrdata.ed.gov/. With controls for other potentially confounding variables, including the racial composition of the high school, the fraction of the student body eligible for free or reduced-price lunches, a widely used proxy for student poverty, is uncorrelated with the ratio of counselors to students and is positively correlated with more teachers per 100 students. This pattern is true of both high schools and K–8 schools.

33. Palardy, “High School Socioeconomic Segregation and Student Attainment,” emphasizes school academic climate and peer influences as two key mediating factors between socioeconomic segregation and student attainment and provides a useful recent overview of this broad literature.

34. Anne T. Henderson and Nancy Berla, A New Generation of Evidence: The Family Is Critical to Student Achievement (Washington, DC: National Committee for Citizens in Education, 1994), 1. Other recent overviews of the vast literature on the effects of parental engagement include William H. Jeynes, “The Relationship Between Parental Involvement and Urban Secondary School Student Academic Achievement: A Meta-Analysis,” Urban Education 42 (January 2007): 82–110; Nancy E. Hill and Diana F. Tyson, “Parental Involvement in Middle School: A Meta-Analytic Assessment of the Strategies That Promote Achievement,” Developmental Psychology 45 (May 2009): 740–63; William Jeynes, “A Meta-Analysis of the Efficacy of Different Types of Parental Involvement Programs for Urban Students,” Urban Education 47 (July 2004): 706–42; Frances L. Van Voorhis, Michelle F. Maier, Joyce L. Epstein, and Chrishana M. Lloyd with Therese Leung, The Impact of Family Involvement on the Education of Children Ages 3 to 8: A Focus on Literacy and Math Achievement Outcomes and Socio-Emotional Skills (New York: MDRC, 2013), accessed June 16, 2014, http://www.mdrc.org/sites/default/files/The_Impact_of_Family_Involvement_FR.pdf; and Mikaela J. Dufur, Toby L. Parcel, and Benjamin A. McKune, “Does Capital at Home Matter More than Capital at School? The Case of Adolescent Alcohol and Marijuana Use,” Journal of Drug Issues 43 (January 2013): 85–102. For a recent debate about whether parental involvement is overrated, see Keith Robinson and Angel L. Harris, The Broken Compass: Parental Involvement with Children’s Education (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014); and Mai Miksic, “Is Parent Involvement Really a Waste of Time? Recent Polemic Versus the Research Record,” CUNY Institute for Education Policy (Policy Briefing, April 23, 2014), accessed June 16, 2014, http://ciep.hunter.cuny.edu/is-parent-involvement-really-a-waste-of-time-recent-polemic-versus-the-research-record/.

35. Kyle Spencer, “Way Beyond Bake Sales: The $1 million PTA,” New York Times, June 3, 2012, MB1; Rob Reich, “Not Very Giving,” New York Times, September 5, 2013, A25. Although we have found no trend data for parental giving to “public privates,” according to the National Association of Independent Schools, median parental donations per private school rose 63 percent from $548,561 to $895,614 over the last decade. Jenny Anderson, “Private Schools Mine Parents’ Data, and Wallets,” New York Times, March 26, 2012.

36. Russell W. Rumberger and Gregory J. Palardy, “Test Scores, Dropout Rates, and Transfer Rates as Alternative Indicators of High School Performance,” American Educational Research Journal 42 (Spring 2005): 3–42; Palardy, “High School Socioeconomic Segregation and Student Attainment.” Perhaps high-income schools need to spend less on remediation and discipline than low-income schools, allowing them to invest more in academically rigorous courses, though I have found no evidence on that issue.

37. See note 32 of this chapter. The division in Figures 4.1, 4.2, and 4.4 between the four levels of school poverty corresponds roughly to quartiles of the distribution of schools. A more detailed analysis suggests that the key determinant of AP offerings is parental income, not race; controlling for poverty, urbanism, school size, and other factors, heavily minority schools actually offer more AP courses than mostly white schools. Kids from more affluent homes are much more likely to take AP exams than kids from less affluent homes, but that class gap has shrunk over the past decade. College Board, “10th Annual AP Report to the Nation,” February 11, 2014, 6. On the other hand, the incidence of gifted-and-talented programs is completely uncorrelated with school poverty in K–8 schools and slightly higher in high-poverty high schools.

38. See Palardy, “High School Socioecomic Segregation,” 741–42, and the literature cited there, and Robert Crosnoe, Fitting In, Standing Out: Navigating the Social Challenges of High School to Get an Education (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

39. Palardy, “High School Socioeconomic Segregation,” esp. 735.

40. Greg J. Duncan and Richard J. Murnane, Restoring Opportunity: The Crisis of Inequality and the Challenge for American Education (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2014), esp. 47–49; Toby L. Parcel and Joshua A. Hendrix, “Family Transmission of Social and Cultural Capital,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Families, eds. Judith Treas, Jacqueline Scott, and Martin Richards (London: John Wiley and Sons, 2014), 374.

41. Scott E. Carrell and Mark L. Hoekstra, “Externalities in the Classroom: How Children Exposed to Domestic Violence Affect Everyone’s Kids,” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 2 (January 2010): 211–28.

42. David S. Kirk and Robert J. Sampson, “Crime and the Production of Safe Schools,” in Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances, eds. Duncan and Murnane.

43. Simone Roberts, Jana Kemp, Jennifer Truman, and Thomas D. Snyder, Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2012 (Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics, 2013), accessed June 16, 2014, http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2013/2013036.pdf. We have not found any statistical breakdown of gang presence or school violence by school poverty rates.

44. See note 32 of this chapter. In a multivariate analysis, the suspension rate is predicted by a school’s poverty rate, black enrollment, urban setting, and large size. As with any measure of discipline, it is impossible to tell from the suspension data alone how much is due to underlying misbehavior and how much to disciplinary standards, but surveys of students themselves, as well as the reports from Lola and Sofia, make it implausible that the pattern in Figure 4.2 is entirely due to disciplinary discrimination.

45. Greg J. Duncan and Katherine Magnuson, “The Nature and Impact of Early Achievement Skills, Attention Skills, and Behavior Problems,” in Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances, eds. Duncan and Murnane, 65.

46. John Rogers and Nicole Mirra, It’s About Time: Learning Time and Educational Opportunity in California High Schools (Los Angeles: Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access, University of California, Los Angeles, 2014).

47. Raj Chetty, John N. Friedman, and Jonah E. Rockoff, “The Long-Term Impacts of Teachers: Teacher Value-Added and Student Outcomes in Adulthood,” NBER Working Paper No. 17699 (Cambridge: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2011), accessed June 16, 2014, http://www.nber.org/papers/w17699; Martin Haberman and William H. Rickards, “Urban Teachers Who Quit: Why They Leave and What They Do,” Urban Education 25 (October 1990): 297–303; Hanushek, Kain, and Rivkin, “Why Public Schools Lose Teachers,” 326–54; Donald Boyd, Hamilton Lankford, Susanna Loeb, and James Wyckoff, “Explaining the Short Careers of High-Achieving Teachers in Schools with Low-Performing Students,” American Economic Review 95 (May 2005): 166–71; Palardy, “High School Socioeconomic Segregation and Student Attainment”; Duncan and Murnane, Restoring Opportunity, 49–50; Eric A. Houck, “Intradistrict Resource Allocation: Key Findings and Policy Implications,” Education and Urban Society 43 (May 2011): 271–95.

48. George Farkas, “Middle and High School Skills, Behaviors, Attitudes, and Curriculum Enrollment, and Their Consequences,” in Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances, eds. Duncan and Murnane (2011), 84–85. Our analysis of data from the annual nationwide “Monitoring the Future” survey of high school seniors shows that while the fraction of students from college-educated homes who are on a college-prep track has remained steady at about 60 percent from 1976 to 2012, the fraction of students from high-school-educated homes in the college-prep track has risen steadily from 30 percent to more than 40 percent. In short, while a tracking gap remains, it has narrowed by about one third during the same period that other measures of the opportunity and achievement gap have sharply widened. Ability grouping within elementary school classrooms seems to have increased in the last decade or so, but we have found no evidence that this grouping disadvantages kids from poorer backgrounds. Tom Loveless, “The Resurgence of Ability Grouping and Persistence of Tracking: Part II of the 2013 Brown Center Report on American Education,” Brookings Institution Report, Brown Center on Education Policy, 2013, accessed October 3, 2014, http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports/2013/03/18-tracking-ability-grouping-loveless; Courtney A. Collins and Li Ga, “Does Sorting Students Improve Scores? An Analysis of Class Composition,” NBER Working Paper No. 18848 (Cambridge: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2013).

49. National Center for Education Statistics, “Advance Release of Selected 2013 Digest Tables, Table 201.20: Enrollment in Grades 9 through 12 in Public and Private Schools Compared with Population 14 to 17 Years of Age: Selected Years, 1889–90 through Fall 2013,” Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, Washington, DC, accessed October 3, 2014, http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_201.20.asp; Thomas D. Snyder and Sally A. Dillow, “Digest of Education Statistics 2012,” Table 41 (NCES 2014–015), National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, Washington, DC, December 2013.

50. For a tasting menu of this massive literature, including more detailed findings about the correlates of particular sorts of extracurricular activities, see Jacquelynne S. Eccles, Bonnie L. Barber, Margaret Stone, and James Hunt, “Extracurricular Activities and Adolescent Development,” Journal of Social Issues 59 (December 2003): 865–89; Jennifer A. Fredericks and Jacquelynne S. Eccles, “Is Extracurricular Participation Associated with Beneficial Outcomes? Concurrent and Longitudinal Relations,” Developmental Psychology 42 (July 2006): 698–713; Amy Feldman Farb and Jennifer L. Matjasko, “Recent Advances in Research on School-Based Extracurricular Activities and Adolescent Development,” Developmental Review 32 (March 2012): 1–48; Nancy Darling, “Participation in Extracurricular Activities and Adolescent Adjustment: Cross-sectional and Longitudinal Findings,” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 34 (October 2005): 493–505; Susan A. Dumais, “Cohort and Gender Differences in Extracurricular Participation: The Relationship Between Activities, Math Achievement, and College Expectations,” Sociological Spectrum 29 (December 2008): 72–100; Stephen Lipscomb, “Secondary School Extracurricular Involvement and Academic Achievement: A Fixed Effects Approach,” Economics of Education Review 26 (August 2007): 463–72; Kelly P. Troutman and Mikaela J. Dufur, “From High School Jocks to College Grads: Assessing the Long-Term Effects of High School Sport Participation on Females’ Educational Attainment,” Youth & Society 38 (June 2007): 443–62; Beckett A. Broh, “Linking Extracurricular Programming to Academic Achievement: Who Benefits and Why?,” Sociology of Education 75 (January 2002): 69–95; Daniel Hart, Thomas M. Donnelly, James Youniss, and Robert Atkins, “High School Community Service as a Predictor of Adult Voting and Volunteering,” American Educational Research Journal 44 (March 2007): 197–219 and studies cited therein.

51. Jonathan F. Zaff, Kristin A. Moore, Angela Romano Pappillo, and Stephanie Williams, “Implications of Extracurricular Activity Participation During Adolescence on Positive Outcomes,” Journal of Adolescent Research 18 (November 2003): 599–630. This study controlled for academic ability, school disorder, family structure, parenting, family socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and peer effects.

52. Robert K. Ream and Russell W. Rumberger, “Student Engagement, Peer Social Capital, and School Dropout Among Mexican American and Non-Latino White Students,” Sociology of Education 81 (April 2008): 109–39.

53. Peter Kuhn and Catherine Weinberger, “Leadership Skills and Wages,” Journal of Labor Economics 23 (July 2005): 395–436.

54. Thomas Fritsch et al., “Associations Between Dementia/Mild Cognitive Impairment and Cognitive Performance and Activity Levels in Youth,” Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 53 (July 2005): 1191–96. The risk of dementia among participants in two or more activities was about one third that of participants who had participated in fewer than two activities.

55. Zaff, Moore, Pappillo, and Williams, “Implications of Extracurricular Activity Participation During Adolescence on Positive Outcomes”; Betsey Stevenson, “Beyond the Classroom: Using Title IX to Measure the Return to High School Sports,” Review of Economics and Statistics 92 (May 2010): 284–301; Vasilios D. Kosteas, “High School Clubs Participation and Earnings” (unpublished manuscript, March 22, 2010), accessed December 15, 2014, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1542360. See also J. M. Barron, B. T. Ewing, and G. R. Waddell, “The Effects of High School Athletic Participation on Education and Labor Market Outcomes,” Review of Economics and Statistics 82 (2000): 409–21, and E. R. Eide, and N. Ronan, “Is Participation in High School Athletics an Investment or a Consumption Good?: Evidence from High School and Beyond,” Economics of Education Review 20 (2001): 431–42.

56. Eccles, Barber, Stone, and Hunt, “Extracurricular Activities and Adolescent Development,” 865–89.

57. Christy Lleras, “Do Skills and Behaviors in High School Matter? The Contribution of Noncognitive Factors in Explaining Differences in Educational Attainment and Earnings,” Social Science Research 37 (September 2008): 888–902; Flavio Cunha, James J. Heckman, and Susanne M. Schennach, “Estimating the Technology of Cognitive and Noncognitive Skill Formation,” Econometrica 78 (May 2010): 883–931; Elizabeth Covay and William Carbonaro, “After the Bell: Participation in Extracurricular Activities, Classroom Behavior, and Academic Achievement,” Sociology of Education 83 (January 2010): 20–45.

58. Christina Theokas and Margot Bloch, “Out-of-School Time Is Critical for Children: Who Participates in Programs?,” Research-to-Results Fact Sheet No. 2006–20 (Washington, DC: Child Trends, 2006).

59. Kristin Anderson Moore, David Murphey, Tawana Bandy, and P. Mae Cooper, “Participation in Out-of-School Time Activities and Programs,” Child Trends Research Brief No. 2014–13 (Washington, DC: Child Trends, 2014). These figures include both school-related and community-based activities.

60. Kaisa Snellman, Jennifer M. Silva, Carl B. Frederick, and Robert D. Putnam, “The Engagement Gap: Social Mobility and Extracurricular Participation Among American Youth,” ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (forthcoming, 2015); Kaisa Snellman, Jennifer M. Silva, and Robert D. Putnam, “Inequity Outside the Classroom: Growing Class Differences in Participation in Extracurricular Activities,” Voices in Urban Education 40 (forthcoming, 2015).

61. Ralph B. McNeal, Jr., “High School Extracurricular Activities: Closed Structures and Stratifying Patterns of Participation,” Journal of Educational Research 91 (January/February 1998): 183–91.

62. See note 32 in this chapter. In a multivariate analysis, the number of sports teams is reduced by a school’s poverty rate, minority enrollment, and urban setting. In other words, organized sports are more common in affluent, white, suburban, and rural schools. School size makes no difference.

63. Pamela R. Bennett, Amy C. Lutz, and Lakshmi Jayaram, “Beyond the Schoolyard: The Role of Parenting Logics, Financial Resources, and Social Institutions in the Social Class Gap in Structured Activity Participation,” Sociology of Education 85 (April 2012): 131–57; Elizabeth Stearns and Elizabeth J. Glennie, “Opportunities to Participate: Extracurricular Activities’ Distribution Across and Academic Correlates in High Schools,” Social Science Research 39 (March 2010): 296–309; Palardy, “High School Socioeconomic Segregation and Student Attainment,” 737.

64. Kate I. Rausch, “Pay-to-Play: A Risky and Largely Unregulated Solution to Save High School Athletic Programs from Elimination,” Suffolk University Law Review 39 (2005–2006): 583–611.

65. Bob Cook, “Will ‘Pay to Play’ Become a Permanent Part of School Sports?,” Forbes, August 22, 2012, accessed June 17, 2014, http://www.forbes.com/sites/bobcook/2012/08/22/will-pay-to-play-become-a-permanent-part-of-school-sports/.

66. “Pay-to-Play Sports Keeping Lower-Income Kids out of the Game,” C. S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health, Vol. 15, no. 3 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, May 14, 2012); “Huntington Bank Annual Backpack Index 2007–2013,” accessed May 11, 2014, http://mms.businesswire.com/media/20130723005089/en/376266/1/2013HuntingtonBackpackIndexSupplyList.pdf?download=1.

67. Eric Dearing et al., “Do Neighborhood and Home Contexts Help Explain Why Low-Income Children Miss Opportunities to Participate in Activities Outside of School?,” Developmental Psychology 45 (November 2009): 1545–62; Bennett, Lutz, and Jayaram, “Beyond the Schoolyard: The Role of Parenting Logics, Financial Resources, and Social Institutions in the Social Class Gap in Structured Activity Participation,” 131–57.

68. Jeremy Staff and Jeylan T. Mortimer, “Social Class Background and the School-to-Work Transition,” New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development 119 (Spring 2008): 55–69; Jeylan T. Mortimer, “The Benefits and Risks of Adolescent Employment,” Prevention Researcher 17 (April 2010): 8–11; Kelly M. Purtell and Vonnie C. McLoyd, “A Longitudinal Investigation of Employment Among Low-Income Youth: Patterns, Predictors, and Correlates,” Youth & Society 45 (June 2013): 243–64.

69. Altonji and Mansfield, “The Role of Family, School, and Community Characteristics in Inequality in Education and Labor-Market Outcomes,” 339–58, find that while family factors are much more important than neighborhood and school factors, the latter are important. However, they do not attempt to determine how important factors under the control of schools (like class size or teacher experience) might be, as compared to peer effects, academic climate, and so on. Palardy, “High School Socioeconomic Segregation and Student Attainment,” 740, finds that “controlling for family and academic background and school inputs, students who attend a high SEC [socioeconomic composition] school have a 68% higher probability of enrolling in a 4-year college than students who attend a low SEC school.” In short, differences between low-income and high-income high schools make a major difference, quite apart from the personal background of the student and the resources made available to the school. The factors that explain this pattern are peer influences and school emphasis on academic preparation, along with teacher morale.

70. One important example of this much needed kind of thinking is Duncan and Murnane, Restoring Opportunity.

71. Richard J. Murnane, “U.S. High School Graduation Rates: Patterns and Explanations,” Journal of Economic Literature 51 (June 2013): 370–422. See also Russell Rumberger and Sun Ah Lim, “Why Students Drop Out of Schools: A Review of 25 Years of Research,” Policy Brief 15 (University of California, Santa Barbara: California Dropout Research Project, October 2008). As Murnane describes in detail, measuring high school dropout and completion rates is technically messy, so the detailed numbers in this section should be taken with more than a grain of salt, but the basic picture seems fairly accurate.

72. Murnane, “U.S. High School Graduation Rates,” 370–422; James J. Heckman, John Eric Humphries, and Nicholas S. Mader, “The GED,” NBER Working Paper No. 16064 (Cambridge: National Bureau of Economic Research, June 2010). Discounting for the GED boom of the late twentieth century, Murnane shows, the high school dropout rate stalled from 1970 to 2000, though in the early years of the twenty-first century the dropout rate began to fall, and the rate of regular high school completion resumed its pre-1970 growth. The reasons for this improvement after 2000 remain unclear, as does the degree to which it has or has not narrowed the class gap.

73. David Autor, The Polarization of Job Opportunities in the U.S. Labor Market: Implications for Employment and Earnings, The Center for American Progress and the Hamilton Project, accessed May 13, 2014, http://economics.mit.edu/files/5554.

74. Martha J. Bailey and Susan M. Dynarski, “Gains and Gaps: Changing Inequality in U.S. College Entry and Completion,” NBER Working Paper No. 17633 (Cambridge: National Bureau of Economic Research, December 2011); Mark E. Engberg and Daniel J. Allen, “Uncontrolled Destinies: Improving Opportunity for Low-Income Students in American Higher Education,” Research in Higher Education 52 (December 2011): 786–807.

75. Using more recent data and a slightly different metric, Robert Bozick and Erich Lauff, Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS: 2002): A First Look at the Initial Postsecondary Experiences of the High School Sophomore Class of 2002 (NCES 2008–308), U.S. Department of Education (Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics, October 2007), report that by 2006, 40 percent of low-income students enrolled in a postsecondary institution immediately after high school graduation, compared to 84 percent of students with family incomes over $100,000.

76. “Bridging the Higher Education Divide: Strengthening Community Colleges and Restoring the American Dream,” The Century Foundation Task Force on Preventing Community Colleges from Becoming Separate and Unequal (New York: The Century Foundation Press, 2013), 3–4.

77. Michael N. Bastedo and Ozan Jaquette, “Running in Place: Low-Income Students and the Dynamics of Higher Education Stratification,” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 33 (September 2011): 318–39; Susan Dynarski, “Rising Inequality in Postsecondary Education,” Brookings Social Mobility Memo (February 13, 2014), accessed June 17, 2014, http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/social-mobility-memos/posts/2014/02/13-inequality-in-postsecondary-education; Sean Reardon, “Education,” in State of the Union: The Poverty and Inequality Report, 2014, Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, Stanford University, 2014, 53–59, accessed October 3, 2014, http://web.stanford.edu/group/scspi/sotu/SOTU_2014_CPI.pdf.

78. According to Sandy Baum and Kathleen Payea, “Trends in For-Profit Postsecondary Education: Enrollment, Prices, Student Aid and Outcomes,” College Board, Trends in Higher Education Series, 2011, 22 percent of full-time bachelor’s students at for-profit institutions graduate within 6 years, compared to 55 percent for public universities and 65 percent for nonprofit institutions. David J. Deming, Claudia Goldin, and Lawrence F. Katz, “The For-Profit Postsecondary School Sector: Nimble Critters or Agile Predators?,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 26 (Winter 2012): 139–64, show that the outcomes from for-profit institutions are worse, even holding constant the students’ background characteristics. See also Suzanne Mettler, Degrees of Inequality: How the Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream (New York: Basic Books, 2014).

79. Estimates in this chart are drawn from “Family Income and Unequal Educational Opportunity, 1970 to 2011,” Postsecondary Education Opportunity 245 (November 2012). The basic trends shown in Figure 4.5 are broadly consistent with the results in Bailey and Dynarski, “Gains and Gaps,” which are methodologically more reliable, but limited to two points in time (roughly 1982 and 2003). Even though estimates in Figure 4.5 probably overstate the level of college graduation among the kids from the richest quartile by about 10 percentage points, I use this chart because it gives a more continuous picture of the trends over time. (The chart also shows the equivalent Bailey-Dynarski datapoints as “open” symbols.) See also Patrick Wightman and Sheldon Danziger, “Poverty, Intergenerational Mobility, and Young Adult Educational Attainment,” in Investing in Children: Work, Education, and Social Policy in Two Rich Countries, eds. Ariel Kalil, Ron Haskins, and Jenny Chesters (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2012), 208–36.

80. Figure 4.6 is drawn from the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002–2012, which has followed a nationally representative sample of the sophomore class of 2002 for a decade: http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/els2002/ and Erich Lauff and Steven J. Ingels, Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS: 2002): A First Look at 2002 High School Sophomores 10 Years Later (NCES 2014–363), U.S. Department of Education (Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics, 2013), accessed June 17, 2014, http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2014/2014363.pdf. Socioeconomic status (SES) here is measured by a combination of parental income, parental education, and parental occupational status. The raw data from the ELS 2002 have been adjusted to account for the fact that a substantial number of lower-SES kids in that birth cohort had dropped out of school prior to the tenth grade. Analysis of the eighth-grade class of 1988 (passing through the system 12 years before the 2002 sophomores) suggests that 3 percent of students from the top SES quartile dropped out between the eighth grade and the tenth grade, but that 14 percent from the bottom SES quartile had done so. See Steven J. Ingels et al., Coming of Age in the 1990s: The Eighth-Grade Class of 1988 12 Years Later (NCES 2002–321), U.S. Department of Education (Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics, 2002), accessed June 17, 2014, http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2002/2002321.pdf.

81. The raw ELS 2002 data show a dropout rate of 7 percent in the bottom quartile of the 2002 sophomores, but that figure substantially understates the actual dropout rate, since most of their eighth-grade peers who failed to finish high school had already dropped out prior to the sophomore year interviews.

82. College financing is a separate topic and this is not the place to review that rapidly expanding debate; see the discussion of savvy in Chapter 5. See Michael Hout, “Social and Economic Returns to College Education in the United States,” Annual Review of Sociology 38 (August 2012): 379–400. See also Duncan and Murnane, Restoring Opportunity, 16–17, citing James J. Heckman and Alan B. Krueger, Inequality in America: What Role for Human Capital Policies? (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005), who observe that, “Analysts differ in their assessments of the relative importance of college costs and academic preparation in explaining the increasing gulf between the college graduates rates of affluent and low-income children in our country.”

83. Test scores refer to eighth-grade mathematics achievement scores. Family socioeconomic status (SES) is measured by a composite score on parental education and occupation and family income. “High” refers to test scores or SES in the top quartile, “low” to test scores or SES in the bottom quartile, and “middle” to test scores or SES in the middle two quartiles. College graduation means obtained BA within 12 years after completing the sophomore year. Source: MaryAnn Fox, Brooke A. Connolly, and Thomas D. Snyder, “Youth Indicators 2005: Trends in the Well-Being of American Youth,” U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2005, p. 50, based on data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88/2000), Fourth Follow-up.

84. Philippe Belley and Lance Lochner, “The Changing Role of Family Income and Ability in Determining Educational Achievement,” Journal of Human Capital 1 (Winter 2007): 37–89.

Chapter 5: Community

1. H. G. Bissingher, “Main Line Madcap,” Vanity Fair, October 1995, 158–60, 165–82.

2. U.S. Census Bureau, as compiled by Social Explorer, accessed through Harvard University Library.

3. Kristen Lewis and Sarah Burd-Sharps, “Halve the Gap by 2030: Youth Disconnection in America’s Cities,” Social Science Research Council, Measure of America project, 2013, accessed October 3, 2014, http://ssrc-static.s3.amazonaws.com/moa/MOA-Halve-the-Gap-ALL-10.25.13.pdf.

4. Although I may have coined the term “air bag” in this context, I am not the first person to notice the phenomenon. The anthropologist Sherry Ortner reports that “I heard, from [upper-middle-class] parents and grown children alike, about an amazing array of what I came to think of as “rescuing mechanisms” on behalf of children who seemed to be in trouble: counseling, therapy, rehab programs, tutoring, booster courses, abortions for pregnant daughters, expensive legal services for sons in trouble with the law.” Sherry B. Ortner, Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 99.

5. My colleague Kathryn Edin played an essential role in our study of inner-city Philadelphia, guiding our understanding and our work, and generously sharing her deep knowledge of the area, as well as some of her unpublished writings.

6. Melody L. Boyd, Jason Martin, and Kathryn Edin, “Pathways to Participation: Youth Civic Engagement in Philadelphia,” unpublished manuscript (Harvard Kennedy School, 2012). See also Kathryn Edin and Maria J. Kefalas, Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).

7. For recent accounts of these pendulum swings, see Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000) on the empirical side; and E. J. Dionne, Jr., Our Divided Political Heart: The Battle for the American Idea in an Age of Discontent (New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2012) on the philosophical side.

8. For an introductory overview of this massive literature, see Putnam, Bowling Alone, 287–363.

9. Peter V. Marsden, “Core Discussion Networks of Americans,” American Sociological Review 52 (February 1987): 122–31; Claude S. Fischer, To Dwell Among Friends: Personal Networks in Town and City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982); Karen E. Campbell, Peter V. Marsden, and Jeanne S. Hurlbert, “Social Resources and Socioeconomic Status,” Social Networks 8 (March 1986): 97–117; Marjolein I. Broese Van Groenou and Theo Van Tilburg, “Network Size and Support in Old Age: Differentials by Socio-Economic Status in Childhood and Adulthood,” Ageing and Society 23 (September 2003): 625–45; Ivaylo D. Petev, “The Association of Social Class and Lifestyles: Persistence in American Sociability, 1974 to 2010,” American Sociological Review 78 (August 2013): 633, 651.

10. The specific question in the Benchmark survey was “About how many close friends do you have these days? These are people you feel at ease with, can talk to about private matters, or call on for help.” This national survey included 30,000 respondents in 2000; for more details and access to the raw data, see http://www.hks.harvard.edu/saguaro/communitysurvey/ and http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/data_access/data/datasets/social_capital_community_survey.html. See also Campbell, Marsden, and Hurlbert, “Social Resources and Socioeconomic Status,” 97–117.

11. See Mark S. Granovetter, “The Strength of Weak Ties,” American Journal of Sociology 78 (May 1973): 1360–80; Mark Granovetter, Getting a Job: A Study of Contacts and Careers (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974); Nan Lin, Walter M. Ensel, and John C. Vaughn, “Social Resources and the Strength of Ties: Structural Factors in Occupational Status Attainment,” American Sociological Review 46 (August 1981): 393–405; Joel M. Podolny and James N. Baron, “Resources and Relationships: Social Networks and Mobility in the Workplace,” American Sociological Review 62 (October 1997): 673–93.

12. Thanks to Lee Rainie and Keith Hampton of the Pew Research Center for providing access to these data. Across the full list of 22 diverse occupations that the researchers asked about, network breadth was best predicted by education, followed by age (highest in late middle age) and small-town residence. Race and gender were not predictive.

13. Annette Lareau, “Invisible Inequality: Social Class and Childrearing in Black Families and White Families,” American Sociological Review 67 (October 2002): 747–76.

14. Ann L. Mullen, Degrees of Inequality: Culture, Class, and Gender in American Higher Education (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010); Jenny M. Stuber, Inside the College Gates: How Class and Culture Matter in Higher Education (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2011); Elizabeth A. Armstrong and Laura T. Hamilton, Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013); Anthony Abraham Jack, “Culture Shock Revisited: The Social and Cultural Contingencies to Class Marginality,” Sociological Forum 29 (June 2014): 453–75.

15. Analysis of Monitoring the Future surveys, 1976–2012, the DEA’s annual national survey of drug usage among American teens. See also Jennifer L. Humensky, “Are Adolescents with High Socioeconomic Status More Likely to Engage in Alcohol and Illicit Drug Use in Early Adulthood?,” Substance Abuse Treatment, Prevention, and Policy 5 (August 2010): 19; and Megan E. Patrick, Patrick Wightman, Robert F. Schoeni, and John E. Schulenberg, “Socioeconomic Status and Substance Use Among Young Adults: A Comparison Across Constructs and Drugs,” Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs 73 (September 2012): 772–82.

16. Putnam, Bowling Alone; Miller McPherson, Lynn Smith-Lovin, and Matthew E. Brashears, “Social Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks Over Two Decades,” American Sociological Review 71 (June 2006): 353–75. For a methodological critique of the McPherson et al. findings, see Claude S. Fischer, “The 2004 GSS Finding of Shrunken Social Networks: An Artifact?,” American Sociological Review 74 (August 2009): 657–69; and Claude S. Fischer, Still Connected: Family and Friends in America Since 1970 (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2011). For evidence tending to confirm the shrinkage hypothesis (though not necessarily the related claim that complete social isolation has increased), see Miller McPherson, Lynn Smith-Lovin, and Matthew E. Brashears, “Models and Marginals: Using Survey Evidence to Study Social Networks,” American Sociological Review 74 (August 2009): 670–81; and Anthony Paik and Kenneth Sanchagrin, “Social Isolation in America: An Artifact,” American Sociological Review 78 (June 2013): 339–60.

17. Petev, “The Association of Social Class and Lifestyles,” 633, 651.

18. Jeffrey Boase and Barry Wellman, “Personal Relationships: On and Off the Internet,” in The Cambridge Handbook of Personal Relationships, eds. Anita L. Vangelisti and Daniel Perlman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 709–23; Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman, Networked: The New Social Operating System (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2012).

19. Kathryn Zichuhr and Aaron Smith, “Digital Differences,” Pew Internet and American Life Project (April 13, 2012), accessed August 21, 2014, http://pewinternet.org/~/media//Files/Reports/2012/PIP_Digital_differences_041312.pdf.

20. Eszter Hargittai and Amanda Hinnant, “Digital Inequality: Differences in Young Adults’ Use of the Internet,” Communication Research 35 (October 2008): 602–21; Fred Rothbaum, Nancy Martland, Joanne Beswick Jannsen, “Parents’ Reliance on the Web to Find Information About Children and Families: Socio-Economic Differences in Use, Skills and Satisfaction,” Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 29 (March/April 2008): 118–28; Eszter Hargittai and Yuli Patrick Hsieh, “Digital Inequality,” in The Oxford Handbook of Internet Studies, ed. William H. Dutton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 129–50.

21. Danah Boyd, It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 172–73.

22. Eszter Hargittai, “The Digital Reproduction of Inequality,” in Social Stratification, ed. David Grusky (Boulder: Westview, forthcoming), 936–44.

23. Evidence of the effects of mentoring can be found in Jean Baldwin Grossman and Joseph P. Tierney, “Does Mentoring Work?: An Impact Study of the Big Brothers Big Sisters Program,” Evaluation Review 22 (June 1998): 403–26; David L. DuBois, Bruce E. Holloway, Jeffrey C. Valentine, and Harris Cooper, “Effectiveness of Mentoring Programs for Youth: A Meta-Analytic Review,” American Journal of Community Psychology 30 (April 2002): 157–97; David L. DuBois et al., “How Effective Are Mentoring Programs for Youth? A Systematic Assessment of the Evidence,” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 12 (August 2011): 57–91; Lance D. Erickson, Steve McDonald, and Glen H. Elder, Jr., “Informal Mentors and Education: Complementary or Compensatory Resources?,” Sociology of Education 82 (October 2009): 344–67. David L. DuBois and Naida Silverthorn, “Characteristics of Natural Mentoring Relationships and Adolescent Adjustment: Evidence from a National Study,” Journal of Primary Prevention 26 (2005): 69–92, report that informal mentoring led to improvements in a broad array of positive and negative adolescent behavior: completion of high school, college attendance, working 10 or more hours a week, binge drinking, using drugs, smoking, gang memberships, fighting, risk taking, self-esteem, life satisfaction, depression, suicidal thoughts, general health, general physical activity, having an STD, using birth control, and using condoms.

24. Civic Enterprises in association with Hart Research Associates, “The Mentoring Effect: Young People’s Perspectives on the Outcomes and Availability of Mentoring,” report for MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership (January 2014), accessed August 21, 2014, http://www.mentoring.org/images/uploads/Report_TheMentoringEffect.pdf. This report offers extensive evidence of the value of both formal and informal mentoring for at-risk kids. We are grateful to John Bridgeland of Civic Enterprises and to Hart Research Associates for making the survey data (a nationally representative sample of 1,109 youth aged 18–21) available to us for secondary analysis, for which we alone are responsible. Respondents were told, “One way that a young person can receive mentoring is through a structured program. . . . An example of a structured mentoring program is Big Brothers Big Sisters. A second type of mentoring is when an adult comes into a young person’s life and they naturally develop an informal mentoring relationship. The adult could be a friend of the family or a teacher with whom the young person maintains a relationship outside of the classroom [other than your parents or whoever raised you]. In both structured and informal mentoring relationships, the adult is supportive and works with the young person to build a relationship by offering guidance, support, and encouragement to help the young person’s positive and healthy development over a period of time.” Respondents were asked whether they had ever had either sort of mentor and, if so, were asked about each mentoring relationship in detail.

25. Erickson, McDonald, and Elder, “Informal Mentors and Education: Complementary or Compensatory Resources?,” 344–67. This research, the most statistically sophisticated study so far, finds that the effects of informal mentoring, when it happens, are even greater for less privileged kids, but that fact is more than offset by the greater frequency of informal mentoring in the lives of privileged kids.

26. Most of the formal mentoring relationships reported in the survey were school-linked. Formal mentoring through churches was rarer and (more important for our purposes) concentrated among upper- not lower-socioeconomic-status kids.

27. In our discussion of mentoring, “rich” and “poor” refer to the top and bottom quartiles of a composite measure of socioeconomic status.

28. Robert J. Sampson, Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 356, emphasis in original. The study of neighborhood effects has been tormented by complicated methodological concerns, especially what is termed “selection bias.” Since people generally choose where to live, if people in a given neighborhood have distinctive characteristics, it is possible that they brought those traits with them to the neighborhood, rather than those traits being “caused” by the neighborhood context. The best contemporary studies, however, have been attuned to that risk, and our discussion here is based on findings that seem robust in the face of that methodological issue. In fact, cross-sectional studies may actually underestimate true neighborhood effects by ignoring the impact of long-term effects. On these methodological issues, see Sampson, Great American City, especially Chapters 12 and 15; Robert J. Sampson and Patrick Sharkey, “Neighborhood Selection and the Social Reproduction of Concentrated Racial Inequality,” Demography 45 (February 2008): 1–29; and Tama Leventhal, Véronique Dupéré, and Elizabeth Shuey, “Children in Neighborhoods,” in Handbook of Child Psychology and Developmental Science, 7th ed., Vol. 4, eds. Richard M. Lerner, Marc H. Bornstein, and Tama Leventhal (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, forthcoming 2015). At the center of these debates is the “Moving to Opportunity” experiment of the 1990s that followed a randomly selected group of poor families who were enabled to move to low-poverty neighborhoods and then carefully compared to a control group of similar families who did not so move. For an overview of the complex and mixed results, see Jens Ludwig, et al., “Neighborhood Effects on the Long-Term Well-Being of Low-Income Adults,” Science 337 (2012): 1505–10; and Lisa Sanbonmatsu et al., “Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing Demonstration Program—Final Impacts Evaluation” (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2011).

29. Velma McBride Murry et al., “Neighborhood Poverty and Adolescent Development,” Journal of Research on Adolescence 21 (March 2011):114–28. Yet unpublished work by Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, and their colleagues using evidence from the Moving to Opportunity study discussed in the previous note confirms that neighborhood effects are largest on younger children.

30. Patrick Sharkey and Felix Elwert, “The Legacy of Disadvantage: Multigenerational Neighborhood Effects on Cognitive Ability,” American Journal of Sociology 116 (May 2011): 1934–81.

31. A randomized controlled study in Maryland estimated that perhaps two-thirds of the effect of neighborhood poverty on children’s outcomes was attributable to poor schools. Heather Schwartz, Housing Policy Is School Policy: Economically Integrative Housing Promotes Academic Success in Montgomery County, MD (New York: Century Foundation, 2010). Another carefully controlled study found that growing up in a high poverty neighborhood increases the likelihood of dropping out of high school: David J. Harding, “Counterfactual Models of Neighborhood Effects: The Effect of Neighborhood Poverty on High School Dropout and Teenage Pregnancy,” American Journal of Sociology 109 (2003): 676–719. On school-community networks, see Anthony S. Bryk, Penny Bender Sebring, Elaine Allensworth, Stuart Luppescu, and John Q. Easton, Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons from Chicago (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010); and Mark R. Warren, “Communities and Schools: A New View of Urban Education Reform,” Harvard Educational Review 75 (2005): 133–73.

32. A recent, comprehensive overview of neighborhood effects on children is Leventhal, Dupéré, and Shuey, “Children in Neighborhoods.”

33. Cynthia M. Duncan, Worlds Apart: Poverty and Politics in Rural America, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014).

34. On collective efficacy, see Sampson, Great American City, Chapter 7, quote at p. 370.

35. Figure 5.4 depicts the simple correlation between trust and poverty, but the correlation remains robust and substantial with controls for personal finances, education, citizenship, ethnicity, crime rates, income inequality, ethnic diversity, language, commuting time, residential mobility, homeownership, gender, region, and age. See Robert D. Putnam, “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the 21st Century: The 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture,” Scandinavian Political Studies 30 (June 2007): 137–74, especially Table 3. The same pattern also applies to how often neighbors speak with one another.

36. See Putnam, Bowling Alone, 138; and Orlando Patterson, “Liberty Against the Democratic State: On the Historical and Contemporary Sources of American Distrust,” in Democracy and Trust, ed. Mark E. Warren (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 187–91.

37. Putnam, Bowling Alone; Wendy M. Rahn and John E. Transue, “Social Trust and Value Change: The Decline of Social Capital in American Youth, 1976–1995,” Political Psychology 19 (September 1998): 545–65; April K. Clark, Michael Clark, and Daniel Monzin, “Explaining Changing Trust Trends in America,” International Research Journal of Social Sciences 2 (January 2013): 7–13; Jean M. Twenge, W. Keith Campbell, and Nathan T. Carter, “Declines in Trust in Others and Confidence in Institutions Among American Adults and Late Adolescents, 1972–2012,” Psychological Science 25 (October 2014): 1914–23.

38. Sampson, Great American City; Leventhal, Dupéré, and Shuey, “Children in Neighborhoods”; Dafna E. Kohen, V. Susan Dahinten, Tama Leventhal, and Cameron N. McIntosh, “Neighborhood Disadvantage: Pathways of Effects for Young Children,” Child Development 79 (January 2008): 156–69; Gopal K. Singh and Reem M. Ghandour, “Impact of Neighborhood Social Conditions and Household Socioeconomic Status on Behavioral Problems Among U.S. Children,” Maternal and Child Health Journal 16 (April 2012): 158–69; Véronique Dupéré, Tama Leventhal, and Frank Vitaro, “Neighborhood Processes, Self-efficacy, and Adolescent Mental Health,” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 53 (June 2012): 183–98; Elizabeth T. Gershoff and Aprile D. Benner, “Neighborhood and School Contexts in the Lives of Children,” in Societal Contexts of Child Development: Pathways of Influence and Implications for Practice and Policy, eds. Elizabeth T. Gershoff, Rashmita S. Mistry, and Danielle A. Crosby (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 141–55.

39. Leventhal, Dupéré, and Shuey, “Children in Neighborhoods”; Rand D. Conger and M. Brent Donnellan, “An Interactionist Perspective on Socioeconomic Context of Human Development,” Annual Review of Psychology 58 (2007): 175–99; Glen H. Elder, Jr., Jacquelynne S. Eccles, Monika Ardelt, and Sarah Lord, “Inner-City Parents Under Economic Pressure: Perspectives on the Strategies of Parenting,” Journal of Marriage and Family 57 (August 1995): 771–84; Véronique Dupéré, Tama Leventhal, Robert Crosnoe, and Eric Dion, “Understanding the Positive Role of Neighborhood Socioeconomic Advantage in Achievement: The Contribution of the Home, Child Care, and School Environments,” Developmental Psychology 46 (September 2010): 1227–44; Candice L. Odgers et al., “Supportive Parenting Mediates Neighborhood Socioeconomic Disparities in Children’s Antisocial Behavior from Ages 5 to 12,” Development and Psychopathology 24 (August 2012): 705–21.

40. Frank F. Furstenberg et al., Managing to Make It: Urban Families and Adolescent Success (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).

41. Gershoff and Benner, “Neighborhood and School Contexts in the Lives of Children,” 143; Jason M. Bacha et al., “Maternal Perception of Neighborhood Safety as a Predictor of Child Weight Status: The Moderating Effect of Gender and Assessment of Potential Mediators,” International Journal of Pediatric Obesity 5 (January 2010): 72–79; Beth E. Molnar, Steven L. Gortmaker, Fiona C. Bull, and Stephen L. Buka, “Unsafe to Play? Neighborhood Disorder and Lack of Safety Predict Reduced Physical Activity Among Urban Children and Adolescents,” American Journal of Health Promotion 18 (May 2004): 378–86; Deborah A. Cohen, Brian K. Finch, Aimee Bower, and Narayan Sastry “Collective Efficacy and Obesity: The Potential Influence of Social Factors on Health,” Social Science & Medicine 62 (2006): 769–78; H. Mollie Greves Grow, Andrea J. Cook, David E. Arterburn, Brian E. Saelens, Adam Drewnowski, and Paula Lozano, “Child Obesity Associated with Social Disadvantage of Children’s Neighborhoods,” Social Science & Medicine 71 (2010): 584–91.

42. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “Physical Activity Levels Among Children Aged 9–13 Years—United States, 2002,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 52 (August 22, 2003): 785–88; Penny Gordon-Larsen, Melissa C. Nelson, Phil Page, and Barry M. Popkin, “Inequality in the Built Environment Underlies Key Health Disparities in Physical Activity and Obesity,” Pediatrics 117 (February 2006): 417–24; Billie Giles-Corti and Robert J. Donovan, “Relative Influences of Individual, Social Environmental, and Physical Environmental Correlates of Walking,” American Journal of Public Health 93 (September 2003): 1583–89; Jens Ludwig et al., “Neighborhoods, Obesity, and Diabetes—A Randomized Social Experiment,” New England Journal of Medicine 365 (2011): 1509–19.

43. Paul A. Jargowsky, “Concentration of Poverty in the New Millennium: Changes in Prevalence, Composition, and Location of High Poverty Neighborhoods,” report by the Century Foundation and Rutgers Center for Urban Research and Education (2013), accessed August 21, 2014, http://tcf.org/assets/downloads/Concentration_of_Poverty_in_the_New_Millennium.pdf; Ann Owens and Robert J. Sampson, “Community Well-Being and the Great Recession,” Pathways Magazine (The Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, Spring 2013): 3–7; Patrick Sharkey and Bryan Graham, “Mobility and the Metropolis: How Communities Factor into Economic Mobility,” Pew Charitable Trust report (December 2013), accessed August 21, 2014, http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/pcs_assets/2013/MobilityandtheMetropolispdf.pdf; Jonathan T. Rothwell and Douglas S. Massey, “Geographic Effects on Intergenerational Income Mobility,” Economic Geography 90 (January 2015): 1–23.

44. Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), especially Chapter 13. Statistics in this paragraph come from the 2006 Faith Matters national survey, described in that book.

45. John M. Wallace and Tyrone A. Forman, “Religion’s Role in Promoting Health and Reducing Risk Among American Youth,” Health Education and Behavior 25 (December 1998): 721–41; Mark D. Regnerus and Glen H. Elder, Jr., “Staying on Track in School: Religious Influences in High- and Low-Risk Settings” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Anaheim, CA, August 2001); Chandra Muller and Christopher G. Ellison, “Religious Involvement, Social Capital, and Adolescents’ Academic Progress: Evidence from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988,” Sociological Focus 34 (May 2001): 155–83; Christian Smith and Robert Faris, “Religion and American Adolescent Delinquency, Risk Behaviors, and Constructive Social Activities,” a research report of the National Study of Youth and Religion (Chapel Hill, NC, 2002), accessed August 21, 2014, http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED473128; Jonathan K. Zaff, Kristin A. Moore, Angela Romano Pappillo, and Stephanie Williams, “Implications of Extracurricular Activity Participation During Adolescence on Positive Outcomes,” Journal of Adolescent Research 18 (November 2003): 614; Jennifer L. Glanville, David Sikkink, and Edwin I. Hernandez, “Religious Involvement and Educational Outcomes: The Role of Social Capital and Extracurricular Participation,” Sociological Quarterly 49 (Winter 2008): 105–37. These studies control for many other factors that might make the correlations spurious. The best studies of selection bias in the case of religious engagement conclude that, if anything, this bias tends to obscure, not exaggerate, the effects of religion: Mark D. Regnerus and Christian Smith, “Selection Effects in Studies of Religious Influence,” Review of Religious Research 47 (September 2005): 23–50; Jonathan H. Gruber, “Religious Market Structure, Religious Participation, and Outcomes: Is Religion Good for You?,” Advances in Economic Analysis & Policy 5 (December 2005).

46. Eric Dearing et al., “Do Neighborhood and Home Contexts Help Explain Why Low-Income Children Miss Opportunities to Participate in Activities Outside of School?,” Developmental Psychology 45 (November 2009): 1545–62. Author’s analysis of Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey (2000); out of seventeen different types of organizations, only self-help, veterans, and seniors groups are less class biased in their membership than religious groups.

47. Putnam and Campbell, American Grace, 252–53. The same generational trend of increasing class bias in church attendance appears in the General Social Survey, the National Educational Studies, and in the Roper Political and Social Trends archive, with either education (relative or absolute) or income as a measure of socioeconomic status, though more clearly with education. Attendance measures differ from archive to archive, but the trends by education are similar. The growth of the class gap is sharper for men than for women, and if anything, sharper among blacks than among whites and among evangelical Protestants than among other traditions. If all races are analyzed together, this trend is masked, because nonwhites are poorer, less educated, and more religious, but the growing class gap appears in each race, considered separately.

48. See Barrie Thorne, “The Crisis of Care,” in Work-Family Challenges for Low-Income Parents and Their Children, eds. Ann C. Crouter and Alan Booth (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004): 165–78; and Markella B. Rutherford, Adult Supervision Required: Private Freedom and Public Constraints for Parents and Children (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2011).

Chapter 6: What Is to Be Done?

1. Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Patrick Kline, and Emmanuel Saez, “Where Is the Land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 129 (November 2014); Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Patrick Kline, Emmanuel Saez, and Nicholas Turner, “Is the United States Still a Land of Opportunity? Recent Trends in Intergenerational Mobility,” American Economic Review Papers & Proceedings 104 (May 2014): 141–47. See also note 48 in Chapter 1.

2. Isabel V. Sawhill, “Trends in Intergenerational Mobility,” in Getting Ahead or Losing Ground: Economic Mobility in America, eds. Ron Haskins, Julia B. Isaacs, and Isabel V. Sawhill (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2008).

3. Wendy in Port Clinton is the sole parent who herself came from an affluent background. Simone’s father attended NYU. Earl’s father attended college for a year before entering the construction business, but by the time Earl himself was ready for college that business had gone bust, leaving Earl to fend for himself.

4. Arthur M. Okun, Equality and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1975).

5. Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, “The Legacy of U.S. Educational Leadership: Notes on Distribution and Economic Growth in the 20th Century,” American Economic Review 91 (May 2001): 18–23; Eric A. Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann, “The Role of Cognitive Skills in Economic Development,” Journal of Economic Literature 46 (September 2008): 607–68; Elhanan Helpman, The Mystery of Economic Growth (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010); Martin West, “Education and Global Competitiveness: Lessons for the United States from International Evidence,” in Rethinking Competitiveness, ed. Kevin A. Hassett (Washington, DC: AEI Press, 2012).

6. Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, The Race Between Education and Technology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 98; Michael Handel, “Skills Mismatch in the Labor Market,” Annual Review of Sociology 29 (2003): 135–65; James J. Heckman et al., “The Rate of Return to the HighScope Perry Preschool Program,” Journal of Public Economics 94 (February 2010): 114–28; Pedro Carneiro and James J. Heckman, “Human Capital Policy,” in Inequality in America: What Role for Human Capital Policies?, eds. James J. Heckman, Alan B. Krueger, and Benjamin M. Friedman (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003).

7. Daron Acemoglu and David Autor, “What Does Human Capital Do? A Review of Goldin and Katz’s The Race Between Education and Technology,” Journal of Economic Literature 50 (June 2012): 426–63.

8. Harry J. Holzer, Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, Greg J. Duncan, and Jens Ludwig, “The Economic Costs of Childhood Poverty in the United States,” Journal of Children and Poverty 14 (March 2008): 41–61.

9. Clive R. Belfield, Henry M. Levin, and Rachel Rosen, The Economic Value of Opportunity Youth (Washington, DC: Corporation for National and Community Service, 2012), accessed October 6, 2014, http://www.dol.gov/summerjobs/pdf/EconomicValue.pdf. Opportunity youth comprise the lowest 17 percent of young people in terms of preparation for work and life.

10. Katharine Bradbury and Robert K. Triest, “Inequality of Opportunity and Aggregate Economic Performance,” (paper prepared for the conference on Inequality of Economic Opportunity, Federal Reserve Bank, Boston, October 2014). “Metropolitan area” is defined operationally as the “commuting zone” around a central city. I am grateful to Bradbury and Triest for calculating these specific estimates of the implications of their broader quantitative findings. Other relevant recent studies are Chang-Tai Hsieh, Eric Hurst, Charles I. Jones, and Peter J. Klenow, “The Allocation of Talent and U.S. Economic Growth.” Working Paper 18693 (Cambridge: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2013); and Gustavo A. Marrero and Juan G. Rodriguez, “Inequality of opportunity and growth,” Journal of Development Economics 104 (2013): 107–22.

11. James J. Heckman, “An Effective Strategy for Promoting Social Mobility,” Boston Review (September/October 2012); James J. Heckman, Seong Hyeok Moon, Rodrigo Pinto, Peter A. Savelyev, and Adam Yavitz, “The Rate of Return to the High/Scope Perry Preschool Program,” Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit/Institute for the Study of Labor Discussion Paper No. 4533 (Bonn, Germany: IZA, October 2009), accessed September 26, 2014, http://ftp.iza.org/dp4533.pdf. Other researchers, while agreeing that the rate of return from early childhood education is favorable, view the Heckman estimate as perhaps too high, based as it is on a single landmark study begun in the 1960s of the Perry Preschool in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

12. On the related issue of the economic effects of inequality of income (not inequality of opportunity), the textbook theory once was that such inequality contributed to economic growth by providing incentives for effort and savings for investment that boost growth. More recent evidence strongly suggests the reverse—that high levels of inequality impede sustainable growth. See (among many other sources) Alberto Alesina and Dani Rodrik, “Distributive Politics and Economic Growth,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 109 (May 1994): 465–90; Andrew G. Berg and Jonathan D. Ostry, “Inequality and Unsustainable Growth: Two Sides of the Same Coin?,” IMF Staff Discussion Note 11/08 (Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund, April 8, 2011); Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future (New York: W. W. Norton, 2012); and Jonathan D. Ostry, Andrew Berg, and Charalambos G. Tsangarides, “Redistribution, Inequality, and Growth,” IMF Staff Discussion Note 14/02 (Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund, February 2014). In mid-2014, Standard and Poor’s trimmed its forecast of U.S. economic growth by 0.3 percent because of the large gaps between the rich and poor in the United States and forecast more turbulent economic times ahead because of inequality. Peter Schroeder, “S&P: Income Inequality Slowing Economy,” The Hill, August 5, 2014, accessed October 6, 2014, http://thehill.com/policy/finance/214316-sp-income-inequality-slowing-economy. Economists disagree about the reasons why extreme inequality might reduce growth—perhaps because it limits aggregate demand because of the high savings rate of the rich, perhaps because of supply-side constraints on adequately skilled labor, perhaps because high inequality triggers financial instability, and perhaps because of political distortions and popular unrest that impede economic growth.

13. Robert A. Dahl, On Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).

14. Meira Levinson, No Citizen Left Behind (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012); Sidney Verba, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Henry E. Brady, Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995); Kay Lehman Schlozman, Sidney Verba, and Henry E. Brady, The Unheavenly Chorus: Unequal Political Voice and the Broken Promise of American Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012); Andrea K. Finlay, Constance Flanagan, and Laura Wray-Lake, “Civic Engagement Patterns and Transitions over 8 Years: The AmeriCorps National Study,” Developmental Psychology 47 (November 2011): 1728–43; Jonathan F. Zaff, James Youniss, and Cynthia M. Gibson, “An Inequitable Invitation to Citizenship: Non-College-Bound Youth and Civic Engagement,” Report prepared for PACE (Washington, DC: Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement, October 2009).

15. Data on 2008 and 2010 civic engagement are from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey; for these purposes “college-educated” means any youth aged 20–25 currently enrolled in postsecondary education or holding a postsecondary degree. We simply counted the number of types of activity a youth reported from our list of six. See also “Understanding a Diverse Generation: Youth Civic Engagement in the United States,” CIRCLE Research Report (Tufts University, November 2011), accessed October 6, 2014, http://www.civicyouth.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/CIRCLE_cluster_report2010.pdf.

16. Laura Wray-Lake and Daniel Hart, “Growing Social Inequalities in Youth Civic Engagement? Evidence from the National Election Study,” PS: Political Science and Politics 45 (July 2012): 456–61; Amy K. Syvertsen, Laura Wray-Lake, Constance A. Flanagan, D. Wayne Osgood, and Laine Briddell, “Thirty-Year Trends in U.S. Adolescents’ Civic Engagement: A Story of Changing Participation and Educational Differences,” Journal of Research on Adolescence 21 (September 2011): 586–94. Data on 2008 and 2010 electoral turnout are from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey.

17. Wray-Lake and Hart, “Growing Social Inequalities in Youth Civic Engagement? Evidence from the National Election Study,” show this same pattern of gaps narrowing “downward” for measures of campaign involvement.

18. Analysis by Carl Frederick of the Monitoring the Future survey data of high school seniors, 2005–2012.

19. Kay Lehman Schlozman, Sidney Verba, and Henry E. Brady, “Weapon of the Strong? Participatory Inequality and the Internet,” Perspectives on Politics 8 (June 2010): 487–509.

20. Schlozman, Verba, and Brady, The Unheavenly Chorus, quote at 83.

21. Larry M. Bartels, Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); Martin Gilens, Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012); Jan E. Leighley and Jonathan Nagler, Who Votes Now? Demographics, Issues, Inequality, and Turnout in the United States (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013).

22. Dahl, On Democracy, 76.

23. American Political Science Association Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy, “American Democracy in an Age of Rising Inequality,” Perspectives on Politics 2 (December 2004): 651.

24. William Kornhauser, The Politics of Mass Society (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1959), 212. For a comprehensive overview of the mass society theorists, see Christian Borch, The Politics of Crowds: An Alternative History of Sociology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

25. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1951), 310, as quoted in Borch, The Politics of Crowds, 181.

26. Pope Francis, in “Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium [The Joy of the Gospel], to the Bishops, Clergy, Consecrated Persons and the Lay Faithful on the Proclamation of the Gospel in Today’s World,” Vatican Press, 2013, accessed October 6, 2014, http://w2.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/pdf/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium_en.pdf; Pope Francis in an interview en route to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: John L. Allen, “Pope on Plane: No to a ‘Throw-Away’ Culture,” National Catholic Reporter, July 22, 2013, accessed October 6, 2014, http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/pope-plane-no-throw-away-culture.

27. On the moral philosophy of equality of opportunity, essential reading includes Lawrence A. Blum, “Opportunity and Equality of Opportunity,” Public Affairs Quarterly 2 (October 1988): 1–18; John H. Schaar, “Equality of Opportunity, and Beyond,” in Equality: Selected Readings, eds. Louis P. Pojman and Robert Westmoreland (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 137–47; William Galston, “A Liberal Defense of Equality of Opportunity,” in Equality, eds. Pojman and Westmoreland, 170–81; Bernard A. O. Williams, “The Idea of Equality,” in Equality, eds. Pojman and Westmoreland, 91–101; John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999); John E. Roemer, Equality of Opportunity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000); Will Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 53–101; T. M. Scanlon, “When Does Equality Matter?” (paper presented at a conference on equality at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Cambridge, MA, April 2004), accessed October 6, 2014, http://www.law.yale.edu/documents/pdf/Intellectual_Life/ltw-Scanlon.pdf; and Richard Arneson, “Equality of Opportunity,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, October 8, 2002, accessed October 6, 2014, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equal-opportunity/.

28. In an interesting essay by Serena Olsaretti, “Children as Public Goods?,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 41 (Summer 2013): 226–58, she argues that we have an obligation to parents to help them raise their children, because those children will contribute to our future well-being. My argument rests instead on our moral obligation not to the parents, but to the kids themselves.

29. For a useful synthesis of approaches to the problem of the opportunity gap, see Lane Kenworthy, “It’s Hard to Make It in America: How the United States Stopped Being the Land of Opportunity,” Foreign Affairs 91 (November 2012): 103–9. I am especially indebted to Tom Sander for a thorough review of policy options to address the opportunity gap.

30. For a treatment of the growing class gap that often coincides with my account descriptively, but that offers a quite different diagnosis, see Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010 (New York: Crown Forum, 2012).

31. For evidence of the powerful influence of religious communities on the attitudes and behavior of their members, see Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), especially chapter 13.

32. Isabel V. Sawhill, Generation Unbound: Drifting into Sex and Parenthood Without Marriage (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2014), 91–93, citing Robert G. Wood, Sheena McConnell, Quinn Moore, Andrew Clarkwest, and JoAnn Hsueh, “The Effects of Building Strong Families: A Healthy Marriage and Relationship Skills Education Program for Unmarried Parents,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 31 (Spring 2012): 228–52; JoAnn Hsueh, Desiree Principe Alderson, Erika Lundquist, Charles Michalopoulos, Daniel Gubits, David Fein, and Virginia Knox, “The Supporting Healthy Marriage Evaluation: Early Impacts on Low-Income Families,” SSRN Electronic Journal (2012), accessed October 11, 2014, www.ssrn.com/abstract=2030319; Adam Carasso and C. Eugene Steuerle, “The Hefty Penalty on Marriage Facing Many Households with Children,” The Future of Children 15 (Fall 2005): 161; Ron Haskins, “Marriage, Parenthood, and Public Policy,” National Affairs (Spring 2014): 65–66; Maria Cancian and Ron Haskins, “Changes in Family Composition: Implications for Income, Poverty, and Public Policy,” ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 654 (July 2014): 42–43.

33. Sawhill, Generation Unbound, 3.

34. Evidence for the following two paragraphs is from Sawhill, Generation Unbound 9, 105–44. For a somewhat different view about the problem, see Andrew J. Cherlin, Labor’s Love Lost: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class Family in America (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2014), Chapter 7.

35. Elizabeth O. Ananat, Anna Gassman-Pines, and Christina M. Gibson-Davis, “The Effects of Local Employment Losses on Children’s Educational Achievement,” in Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances, eds. G. Duncan and R. Murnane (New York: Russell Sage, 2011), 299–315.

36. Kenworthy, “It’s Hard to Make It in America,” 97–109; Greg Duncan, Pamela Morris, and Chris Rodrigues, “Does Money Matter? Estimating Impacts of Family Income on Young Children’s Achievement with Data from Random-Assignment Experiments,” Developmental Psychology 47 (September 2012): 1263–79. See also Rebecca A. Maynard and Richard J. Murnane, “The Effects of a Negative Income Tax on School Performance: Results of an Experiment,” Journal of Human Resources 14 (Autumn 1979): 463–76; Neil J. Salkind and Ron Haskins, “Negative Income Tax: The Impact on Children from Low-Income Families,” Journal of Family Issues 3 (June 1982): 165–80; Pamela Morris et al., How Welfare and Work Policies Affect Children: A Synthesis of Research (New York: MDRC, 2001); Gordon B. Dahl and Lance Lochner, “The Impact of Family Income on Child Achievement,” American Economic Review 102 (August 2005): 1927–56; and Greg J. Duncan, Ariel Kalil, and Kathleen M. Ziol-Guest, “Early Childhood Poverty and Adult Achievement, Employment and Health,” Family Matters (Australia Institute of Family Studies) 93 (2013): 26–35, accessed October 11, 2014, http://www.aifs.gov.au/institute/pubs/fm2013/fm93/fm93c.pdf.

37. For a useful overview of the EITC and child tax credit and possible reforms, see Thomas L. Hungerford and Rebecca Thiess, “The Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit: History, Purpose, Goals, and Effectiveness” (report, Economic Policy Institute, September 25, 2013), accessed October 10, 2014, http://www.epi.org/publication/ib370-earned-income-tax-credit-and-the-child-tax-credit-history-purpose-goals-and-effectiveness/.

38. Jeremy Travis, Bruce Western, and Steve Redburn, eds., The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2014).

39. Jane Waldfogel, What Children Need (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), 45–62, quote at 45. She emphasizes that it is full-time work during a child’s first year that has been shown to be detrimental, not work later in a child’s life and not part-time work during the first year.

40. A 2008 report found that the United States had the least generous paid parental leave policies of any of the 21 high-income countries investigated and ranked next to last in terms of total length of leave offered parents. See Rebecca Ray, Janet C. Gornick, and John Schmitt, “Parental Leave Policies in 21 Countries: Assessing Generosity and Gender Equality” (Washington, DC: Center for Economic and Policy Research, 2008). More recent evidence confirms this low ranking: OECD Family Database, PF2.1 Key characteristics of parental leave systems, October 14, 2014, http://www.oecd.org/els/soc/PF2_1_Parental_leave_systems_1May2014.pdf.

41. For a review of the evidence on day-care quality, see Waldfogel, What Children Need, 72–81, and Lisa Gennetian, Danielle Crosby, Chantelle Dowsett, and Aletha Huston, “Maternal Employment, Early Care Settings and the Achievement of Low-Income Children,” Next Generation Working Paper No. 30 (New York: MDRC, 2007).

42. Educare Learning Network, “A National Research Agenda for Early Education,” April 2014, accessed October 10, 2014, http://www.educareschools.org/results/pdfs/National_Research_Agenda_for_Early_Education.pdf. Early returns on evaluation of Educare are promising; see N. Yazejian and D. M. Bryant, “Promising Early Returns: Educare Implementation Study Data, March 2009” (Chapel Hill: FPG Child Development Institute, UNC, 2009) and “Educare Implementation Study Findings—August 2012,” accessed December 16, 2014, http://eln.fpg.unc.edu/sites/eln.fpg.unc.edu/files/FPG-Demonstrating-Results-August-2012-Final.pdf.

43. Jane Waldfogel and Elizabeth Washbrook, “Early Years Policy,” Child Development Research 2011 (2011): 1–12; Amy J. L. Baker, Chaya S. Piotrkowski, and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, “The Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY),” The Future of Children 9 (Spring/Summer 1999): 116–33; Darcy I. Lowell, Alice S. Carter, Leandra Godoy, Belinda Paulicin, and Margaret J. Briggs-Gowan, “A Randomized Controlled Trial of Child FIRST: A Comprehensive Home-Based Intervention Translating Research into Early Childhood Practice,” Child Development 82 (January 2011): 193–208; “Policy: Helping Troubled Families Turn Their Lives Around,” Department for Communities and Local Government, accessed October 10, 2014, https://www.gov.uk/government/policies/helping-troubled-families-turn-their-lives-around/activity. See also Tondi M. Harrison, “Family Centered Pediatric Nursing Care: State of the Science,” Journal of Pediatric Nursing 25 (October 2010): 335–43.

44. OECD, Education at a Glance: OECD Indicators 2014 (OECD Publishing, 2014), chart C.21, p. 320.

45. James J. Heckman, “Skill Formation and the Economics of Investing in Disadvantaged Children,” Science 312 (June 2006): 1900–1902; Arthur J. Reynolds, Judy A. Temple, Dylan L. Robertson, and Emily A. Mann, “Age 21 Cost-Benefit Analysis of the Title I Chicago Child-Parent Center Program,” Executive Summary (National Institute for Early Childhood Education Research, June 2001).

46. Recent entries in the vast literature evaluating early childhood education include David Deming, “Early Childhood Intervention and Life-Cycle Skill Development: Evidence from Head Start,” American Economic Journal 1 (July 2009): 111–34; Jens Ludwig and Douglas L. Miller, “Does Head Start Improve Children’s Life Chances? Evidence from a Regression-Discontinuity Design,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 122 (2007): 159–208; and Alexander Gelber, “Children’s Schooling and Parents’ Behavior: Evidence from the Head Start Impact Study,” Journal of Public Economics 101 (2013): 25–38. Encouraging results have also been found in the Infant Health Development Program. See Greg J. Duncan, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, and Pamela K. Klebanov, “Economic Deprivation and Early-Childhood Development,” Child Development 65 (April 1994): 296–318; John M. Love and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, “Getting the Most Out of Early Head Start: What Has Been Accomplished and What Needs To Be Done,” in Investing in Young Children: New Directions in Federal Preschool and Early Childhood Policy, eds. W. Steven Barnett and Ron Haskins (Washington, DC: Brooking Institution, 2010), 29–37.

47. Greg J. Duncan and Richard J. Murnane, Restoring Opportunity: The Crisis of Inequality and the Challenge for American Education (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2014), 53–69.

48. William T. Gormley, Deborah Phillips, and Ted Gayer, “Preschool Programs Can Boost School Readiness,” Science 320 (June 27, 2008): 1723–24; William T. Gormley, Jr., Ted Gayer, Deborah Phillips, and Brittany Dawson, “The Effects of Universal Pre-K on Cognitive Development,” Developmental Psychology 41 (November 2005): 872–84; William Gormley, Jr., Ted Gayer, Deborah Phillips, and Brittany Dawson, “The Effects of Oklahoma’s Universal Pre-K Program on School Readiness: An Executive Summary” (Georgetown University: Center for Research on Children in the U.S., November 2004).

49. Douglas S. Massey, Len Albright, Rebecca Casciano, Elizabeth Derickson, and David N. Kinsey, Climbing Mount Laurel: The Struggle for Affordable Housing and Social Mobility in an American Suburb (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 195.

50. Bruce D. Baker, David G. Sciarra, and Danielle Farrie, “Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card” (The Education Law Center and Rutgers Graduate School of Education, 2012).

51. U.S. Department of Education, “For Each and Every Child—A Strategy for Education Equity and Excellence,” a report to the Secretary (Washington, DC: The Equity and Excellence Commission, 2013), accessed October 11, 2014, http://www2.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/eec/equity-excellence-commission-report.pdf.

52. Steven Glazerman, Ali Protik, Bing-ru Teh, Julie Bruch, and Jeffrey Max, “Transfer Incentives for High-Performing Teachers: Final Results from a Multisite Experiment (NCEE 2014–4003)” (Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, November 2013), accessed October 11, 2014, http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20144003/pdf/20144003.pdf.

53. Duncan and Murnane, Restoring Opportunity.

54. Erika A. Patall, Harris Cooper, and Ashley Batts Allen, “Extending the School Day or School Year: A Systematic Review of Research (1985–2009),” Review of Educational Research 80 (September 2010): 401–36.

55. Key studies of the effectiveness of charter schools include Caroline M. Hoxby and Sonali Muraka, “Charter Schools in New York City: Who Enrolls and How They Affect Their Students’ Achievement,” NBER Working Paper No. 14852 (Cambridge: National Bureau of Economic Research, April 2009); Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Joshua Angrist, Susan Dynarski, Thomas J. Kane, and Parag Pathak, “Accountability and Flexibility in Public Schools: Evidence from Boston’s Charters and Pilots,” NBER Working Paper No. 15549 (Cambridge: National Bureau of Economic Research, November 2009); Philip Gleason, Melissa Clark, Christina Clark Tuttle, and Emily Dwoyer, “The Evaluation of Charter School Impacts: Final Report (NCEE 2010–4029), National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, accessed October 11, 2014, http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20104029/; Ron Zimmer et al., “Charter Schools: Do They Cream Skim, Increasing Student Segregation?,” in School Choice and School Improvement, eds. Mark Berends, Marisa Cannata, and Ellen B. Goldring (Cambridge: Harvard Education Press, 2011); and Joshua D. Angrist, Susan M. Dynarski, Thomas J. Kane, Parag A. Pathak, and Christopher R. Walters, “Who Benefits from KIPP?,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 31 (Fall 2012): 837–60.

56. Mark R. Warren, “Communities and Schools: A New View of Urban Education Reform,” Harvard Educational Review 75 (Summer 2005), accessed October 12, 2014, http://www.presidentsleadershipclass.org/images/uploads/ca_files/Communities_and_Schools.pdf. On the importance of community social capital for effective school reform, see Anthony S. Bryk, Penny Bender Sebring, Elaine Allensworth, Stuart Luppescu, and John Q. Easton, Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons from Chicago (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).

57. “What is a Community School?,” Coalition for Community Schools, accessed October 12, 2014, http://www.communityschools.org/aboutschools/what_is_a_community_school.aspx.

58. Colleen Cummings, Alan Dyson, and Liz Todd, Beyond the School Gates: Can Full Service and Extended Schools Overcome Disadvantage? (London: Routledge, 2011); Colleen Cummings et al., “Evaluation of the Full Service Extended Schools Initiative: Final Report,” Research Brief No. RB852 (Department for Education and Skills, June 2007), accessed October 12, 2014, http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20130401151715/ http://www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/RB852.pdf; Joy G. Dryfoos, “Evaluation of Community Schools: Findings to Date” (report, 2000), accessed October 12, 2014, http://www.communityschools.org/assets/1/assetmanager/evaluation%20of%20community%20schools_joy_dryfoos.pdf; Martin J. Blank, Atelia Melaville, and Bela P. Shah, “Making the Difference: Research and Practice in Community Schools” (report of the Coalition for Community Schools, May 2003), accessed October 12, 2014, http://www.communityschools.org/assets/1/page/ccsfullreport.pdf; Child Trends, “Making the Grade: Assessing the Evidence for Integrated Student Supports” (report, February 2014), accessed October 12, 2014, http://www.childtrends.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/2014–07ISSPaper2.pdf.

59. Will Dobbie and Roland G. Fryer, Jr., “Are High Quality Schools Enough to Close the Achievement Gap? Evidence from a Social Experiment in Harlem,” NBER Working Paper No. 15473 (Cambridge: National Bureau of Economic Research, November 2009).

60. James S. Coleman and Thomas Hoffer, Public and Private High Schools: The Impact of Communities (New York: Basic Books, 1987); Anthony S. Bryk, Peter B. Holland, and Valerie E. Lee, Catholic Schools and the Common Good (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993); G. R. Kearney, More Than a Dream: The Cristo Rey Story: How One School’s Vision Is Changing the World (Chicago: Loyola Press, 2008). See also Derek Neal, “The Effects of Catholic Secondary Schooling on Educational Achievement,” Journal of Labor Economics 15 (January 1997): 98–123, and William H. Jeynes, “Religion, Intact Families, and the Achievement Gap,” Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion 3 (2007): 1–24.

61. Don Peck, “Can the Middle Class Be Saved?,” Atlantic, September 2011, accessed October 11, 2014, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/09/can-the-middle-class-be-saved/308600/; Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill, Creating an Opportunity Society (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2009).

62. James J. Kemple, “Career Academies: Long-Term Impacts on Work, Education, and Transitions to Adulthood,” MDRC Report (June 2008), accessed October 12, 2014, http://www.mdrc.org/publication/career-academies-long-term-impacts-work-education-and-transitions-adulthood.

63. Harry J. Holzer, “Workforce Development as an Antipoverty Strategy: What Do We Know? What Should We Do?,” Focus 26 (Fall 2009), accessed October 11, 2014, http://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/focus/pdfs/foc262k.pdf; William C. Symonds, Robert Schwartz, and Ronald F. Ferguson, “Pathways to Prosperity: Meeting the Challenge of Preparing Young Americans for the 21st Century” (report for the Pathways to Prosperity project, Harvard School of Graduate Education, 2011); Ben Olinsky and Sarah Ayres, “Training for Success: A Policy to Expand Apprenticeships in the United States” (report for the Center for American Progress, December 2013), accessed October 12, 2014, http://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/apprenticeship_report.pdf; Robert I. Lerman, “Expanding Apprenticeship Opportunities in the United States” (report for the Hamilton Project, Brookings Institution, 2014); David Card, Jochen Kluve and Andrea Weber, “Active Labour Market Policy Evaluations: A Meta-Analysis,” Economic Journal 120 (November 2010): F452–F477; Katherine S. Newman and Hella Winston, Learning to Labor in the 21st Century: Building the Next Generation of Skilled Workers (New York: Metropolitan, forthcoming 2015). YouthBuild has shown positive results in nonexperimental research; see, for example, Wally Abrazaldo et al., “Evaluation of the YouthBuild Youth Offender Grants: Final Report,” Social Policy Research Associates (May 2009). The Department of Labor has commissioned MDRC to conduct an experimental randomized control trial (RCT) on YouthBuild across 83 sites. Controlled experimental studies have found favorable results from such programs as Job Corps, Service and Conservation Corps, and National Guard Youth ChalleNGe; MDRC, “Building Better Programs for Disconnected Youth,” February 2013, accessed November 24, 2014, http://www.mdrc.org/sites/default/files/Youth_020113.pdf.

64. Arthur M. Cohen and Florence B. Brawer, The American Community College, 5th ed. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008), 444. See also Sandy Baum, Jennifer Ma, and Kathleen Payea, “Trends in Public Higher Education: Enrollment, Prices, Student Aid, Revenues, and Expenditures,” Trends in Higher Education Series, College Board Advocacy & Policy Center (May 2012): 3–31; Clive R. Belfield and Thomas Bailey, “The Benefits of Attending Community College: A Review of the Evidence,” Community College Review 39 (January 2011): 46–68; and Christopher M. Mullin and Kent Phillippe, “Community College Contributions,” Policy Brief 2013–01PB (Washington, DC: American Association of Community Colleges, January 2013). Recent blue-ribbon national reports on community colleges include American Association of Community Colleges, “Reclaiming the American Dream: Community Colleges and the Nation’s Future,” report from the 21st Century Commission on the Future of Community Colleges (April 2012), accessed October 12, 2014, http://www.insidehighered.com/sites/default/server_files/files/21stCentReport.pdf; and Century Foundation Task Force on Preventing Community Colleges from Becoming Separate and Unequal, “Bridging the Higher Education Divide: Strengthening Community Colleges and Restoring the American Dream” (New York: Century Foundation Press, May 2013), accessed October 12, 2014, http://tcf.org/assets/downloads/20130523-Bridging_the_Higher_Education_Divide-REPORT-ONLY.pdf. I am especially grateful to Edwenna Rosser Werner for extensive background research on community colleges.

65. For guidelines on mentoring best practices, see MENTOR, “Elements of Effective Practice for Mentoring,” 3rd ed., report of the National Mentoring Partnership, accessed October 12, 2014, http://www.mentoring.org/downloads/mentoring_1222.pdf.

66. I refer here to Tenacity, a highly effective school-based mentoring program in Boston that uses tennis as its calling card; Skateducate, a Danish mentoring program based on skateboarding; and Quest, a summer-school-plus-mentoring program run by local Rotary Clubs in New England that brings together adults and disadvantaged kids around outdoor activities like fishing.

67. Nancy Andrews and David Erikson, eds., “Investing in What Works for America’s Communities: Essays on People, Place and Purpose,” report by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and Low Income Investment Fund, 2012, accessed October 12, 2014, http://www.frbsf.org/community-development/files/investing-in-what-works.pdf; Tracey Ross and Erik Stedman, “A Renewed Promise: How Promise Zones Can Help Reshape the Federal Place-Based Agenda,” report of the Center for American Progress, May 2014, accessed October 12, 2014, http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/poverty/report/2014/05/20/90026/a-renewed-promise/.

68. Patrick Sharkey, “Neighborhoods, Cities, and Economic Mobility” (paper prepared for the Boston Federal Reserve conference on Inequality of Economic Opportunity, Boston, October 17–18, 2014), and sources cited there. Greg J. Duncan, Aletha C. Huston, and Thomas S. Weisner, Higher Ground: New Hope for the Working Poor and Their Children (New York: Russell Sage, 2009); Johannes Bos et al., “New Hope for People with Low Incomes: Two-Year Results of a Program to Reduce Poverty and Reform Welfare” (New York: MDRC, 1999); Aletha C. Huston et al., “New Hope for Families and Children: Five-Year Results of a Program to Reduce Poverty and Reform Welfare,” Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, 2003; Aletha C. Huston et al., “Work-Based Antipoverty Programs for Parents Can Enhance the School Performance and Social Behavior of Children,” Child Development 72 (2001): 318–36; Howard S. Bloom, James A. Riccio, Nandita Verma, and Johanna Walter, “Promoting Work in Public Housing. The Effectiveness of Jobs-Plus. Final Report.” Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, New York: 2005.

69. Patrick Sharkey, “Neighborhoods, Cities, and Economic Mobility”; Xavier de Souza Briggs, Susan J. Popkin, and John Goering, Moving to Opportunity: The Story of an American Experiment to Fight Ghetto Poverty (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); Leonard S. Rubinowitz and James E. Rosenbaum, Crossing the Class and Color Lines: From Public Housing to White Suburbia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000); Micere Keels, Greg J. Duncan, Stefanie Deluca, Ruby Mendenhall, and James Rosenbaum, “Fifteen Years Later: Can Residential Mobility Programs Provide a Long-Term Escape from Neighborhood Segregation, Crime, and Poverty?” Demography 42 (February 2005): 51–73; Jens Ludwig, Brian Jacob, Greg Duncan, James Rosenbaum, and Michael Johnson, “Neighborhood Effects on Low-Income Families: Evidence from a Housing-Voucher Lottery in Chicago” (working paper, University of Chicago, 2010); Jennifer Darrah and Stefanie DeLuca, “ ‘Living Here Has Changed My Whole Perspective’: How Escaping Inner-City Poverty Shapes Neighborhood and Housing Choice,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 33 (Spring 2014): 350–84.

70. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” in Essays: First Series (1841). Thanks to Thomas Spragens for alerting me to this passage.

71. Yvonne Abraham, “Doing Right by the Children in Chelsea,” Boston Globe, August 31, 2014.

The Stories of Our Kids

1. Some quotations have been lightly edited to remove interjections, false starts, and repetition. For the sake of coherence, comments about the same subject from different parts of an interview have occasionally been placed together as a single statement. In no case do these edits alter the sense or tone of the quotation.

2. Jennifer M. Silva, Coming Up Short: Working-Class Adulthood in an Age of Uncertainty (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).