Americans Overestimate Class Mobility

Pacific Standard: 

America, we learn as children, is the land of opportunity—a place where anyone who works hard and saves their money can climb their way into a higher social class. While statistics do not bear out this belief, newly published research suggests it remains stubbornly entrenched in our minds.

Across four studies, Americans offered “substantial and consistent overestimates of class mobility, overestimating the amount of income mobility and educational access by a wide margin,” write University of Illinois psychologists Michael Kraus and Jacinth Tan.

In the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, they report some Americans—young people, conservatives, and, unsurprisingly, members of the upper class—are more likely than others to hold unrealistic views on this subject.

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