Modeling Equal Opportunity

Isabel V. Sawhill; Richard V. Reeves

doi:10.7758/RSF.2016.2.2.03

Abstract

We examine the themes of equal opportunity, intergenerational mobility, and inequality. We address the normative and definitional questions of selecting measures of mobility and summarize the current state of intergenerational mobility in the United States and abroad. We introduce a new microsimulation model, the Social Genome Model (SGM), which provides a framework for measuring success in each stage of the life cycle. We show how the SGM can be used not only to understand the pathways to the middle class, but also to simulate the impact of policy interventions on rates of mobility.

Copyright © 2016 by Russell Sage Foundation. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Reproduction by the United States Government in whole or in part is permitted for any purpose. The author thanks the Boston Federal Reserve Bank for its support in completing this paper, and the Russell Sage Foundation for support for parts of it. Emily Cuddy and Jonathan Fisher helped with data preparation; Deborah Johnson, David Chancellor, and Dawn Duren provided additional editorial help. Angela Glover Blackwell, Joseph R. Fishkin, Katharine Bradbury, Robert Triest, two referees, and the participants at the Boston Federal Reserve Bank Conference on Inequality of Economic Opportunity held October 17–18, 2014, are thanked for comments on an earlier draft and presentation. All errors of commission and omission are the responsibility of the author alone. Direct correspondence to: Timothy M. Smeeding at smeeding{at}lafollette.wisc.edu, Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 3464 Sewell Social Sciences Bldg., Madison, WI 53706.

Open Access Policy: RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences is an open access journal. This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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