Many of us are concerned by generational poverty. We want ours to be a land of opportunity, but impoverishment seems to linger for too long for too many. The stark reality is that people who are born poor in the U.S. are likely to remain this way, but the exact reasons that income inequality perpetuates across generations are difficult to establish.
A recent Wall Street Journal article highlighted a pair of economists who may have identified one of the factors. It turns out that poor students who grew up in areas with high income inequality are significantly more likely to drop out of high school than students who grew up in areas with less inequality.
The economists, Melissa Kearney at the University of March and Phillip Levine at Wellesley College write that children from low income backgrounds appear to be responding unfavorably to large gaps between their economic reality and middle class life by dropping out of school in large numbers. That helps to perpetuate economic disadvantage and impedes upward mobility.
Few decisions are as economically damaging as dropping out of high school. The problem is worse for boys than girls. Boys from humble economic backgrounds appear less confident regarding their economic prospects no matter what they do.
