Tagged: Pew Economic Mobility Project

This chart comes from a report released yesterday by the Pew Economic Mobility Project. The report looked at the effects of unemployment on American families. Overall, the report says one third of families in America experienced some form of unemployment between 1999 - 2009. But minority families were far more likely to be affected. Forty-one percent of black families and 51 percent of Latino families experienced unemployment during the period, compared to 30 percent of whites. 

Be honest: How many of you made a New Year's resolution to save more money?

Saving money can be especially hard to do in a tough economy, so kudos to you. For families at the bottom of the economic ladder, saving money can make a real difference.

Erin Currier directs the Pew Economic Mobility Project. She says "when low income families can develop their own savings, their own assets, their children are significantly more likely to move up the income ladder."

Currier's team did a 2009 study called "A Penny Saved is Mobility Earned," and they found that savings and upward mobility are linked together, especially for families in the lowest income bracket.

Children of low-saving (i.e., below median), low-income parents are significantly less likely to be upwardly mobile than children of high-saving, low-income parents.

Seventy-one percent of children born to high-saving, low-income parents move up from the bottom income quartile over a generation, compared to only 50 percent of children of low-saving, low-income parents. 

A new report by the Pew Economic Mobility Project shows that while all communities were impacted by the Great Recession, families in high-poverty neighborhoods took the hardest hit.

Here's a bit more information to help explain yesterday's story Five facts about achieving the American Dream. We've gotten some comments from listeners about how to interpret our five facts, and one of the biggest areas of confusion concerns the distinction between "absolute" and "relative" measures economic mobility.