Socio-Economic Mobility And The American Dream

Research paper
What is Socio-economic mobility? Has it changed over the years? is it affecting the American dream? Socio-economic mobility is the ability for a person or a group of individuals to move up or down the ranks of income distribution and social class over the course of their lifetime and cross generations, changing their wealth and social status (The PEW Charitable trusts 2013). The Pew Charitable Trusts reports, that there are two types of economic mobility: The first one is absolute; in which the economic growth and dollar inflation increases the entire population’s living standards over time, resulting in each generation to achieve a higher economic status than the prior generations. The second type is relative socio-economic

The American dream is where we could have political and economic freedom, equality, the ability to have socio-economic mobility and achieve happiness through hard work and playing by the rules. For many years, millions of people came to the United States to have political and economic freedom and to live in a land with liberty and justice for all. To now the health and status of the American dream, we need to have a better understanding of the current socio-economic mobility in the society (PEW 2012). People have a misconception about equality and socio-economic mobility in the USA. They do not know the reality of what is happening, to what extent income inequality and discrimination have changed, and grew in the past years and how it is affecting our socio-economic mobility and the American

According to a study by a UC Berkeley professors and economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, The share of the national income earned by the top 1% has increased considerably over the past 30 years. Their study shows that the top 1% own more than 40% of all the national wealth, the top 10% have 77.2% of the national wealth, and the rest 90% of American, only have 22.8% of the wealth distributed between them. This shows how hard working Americans are not getting the gain from their productivity because of income inequality; effecting their ability to achieve the American dream.
Furthermore, some people with certain races have experienced racism and discrimination and still do until this day. For example, when African Americans begun to gain some social privileges, people where afraid and they did not want that to happen. As in the move “The Great Gatsby,” Tom Buchanan missioned, “civilization is going to pieces” because of the African Americans started to get some freedom. People with certain races are still being discriminated preventing them from having an equal opportunity at life due to the fear that one day they will take over everything as Tom explains in the