The U.S. lags other countries in assuring opportunity for everyone; we should demand bold changes

[marmar]

from TomPaine.com:


Lost Opportunity
Alan Jenkins
July 17, 2007


Alan Jenkins is Executive Director of The Opportunity Agenda, a communications, research and advocacy organization dedicated to building the national will to expand opportunity in America. He is co-editor, with Dr. Brian Smedley, of the upcoming book Everything Being Equal: Instigating Opportunity in an Inequitable Time.

Recent figures from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development bring home what millions of Americans already know: that the very promise of opportunity in America is fading for everyday people, with grave implications for everyone in our country.

Opportunity is one of America's strongest ideals, and one of our greatest national assets. It is the idea that everyone deserves a fair chance to achieve his or her full potential and that, when that happens, our entire nation prospers. Opportunity encompasses the value of mobility—the focus of the OECD figures—but also the values of equality, security, a voice in decisions that affect us, a chance to start over after missteps or misfortune, and a shared sense of responsibility for each other as members of a common society. The coming presidential election is the right time to demand a new commitment to opportunity and a new recognition that we're all in it together.

The figures from the OECD—an international think tank that measures economic and social indicators in the world's wealthy countries—show a strikingly low level of mobility in the United States, especially compared with other industrialized nations. The OECD found that economic upward mobility between generations is lower in the United States than in Canada, Sweden, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Austria, Norway, Finland, and France. British kids born to fathers in the bottom fifth of U.K. national earnings have less than a 30 percent chance of ending up in that earning group themselves, while U.S. kids have more than a 40 percent likelihood of remaining stuck at the bottom.

The OECD research sadly reinforces the findings of The Opportunity Agenda's 2006 State of Opportunity in America , which surveyed several decades of public data, as well the 2007 update released in April of this year. For example, between 2003 and 2004 (the latest figures available), income grew nearly twelve times more rapidly among the top 1 percent of U.S. income groups than the bottom 90 percent, mirroring trends that began in the early 1980s. Between 2001 and 2004, the top fifth of U.S. households gained wealth, while the bottom four-fifths lost it. At the same time, the nation's colleges and universities, a major engine for social and economic mobility, became less affordable for working families. Between 2004 and 2006, for example, college affordability declined in 17 states, and need-based student aid badly failed to keep pace. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/07/17/lost_opportunity.php