A previous look at absolute economic mobility by Pew showed how 83 percent of families make more than their parents did, adjusting for inflation and family size. A new interactive graphic at www.pewstates.org digs deeper into the data — giving people a look at the extent of how people are doing better and dividing the information up by race, education and number of earners.
The study shows that a greater proportion of dual-earner families have more income than their parents did when compared with single-earner families. Ninety-three percent of dual-earner families are making more than their parents, while 77 percent of single-earner families are making more.
Setting the graphic to see how many dual-earner families are making at least $25,000 more than their parents shows a starker difference. Sixty-two percent of dual-earner families are making at least 25,000 more than their parents, while only 35 percent of single-earner families do the same.
But if the interactive data is set to show what percentage of dual- and single-earner families are making at least $100,000 more in income, the gap between the number of earners disappears. Six percent of both dual- and single-earners make that much more than their parents.
It is increasingly the case that having two workers in a family is important for upward mobility," Elliott said. "Given that we have more dual-earner families in this country and we also have this growth in upward income mobility, (the data) points to this connection between dual-earner families and upward income mobility." Deseret News
To learn more about economic mobility, watch the following video by Pew Charitable Trusts.
