might look a little different for everyone. But at its heart, it promises upward mobility, the opportunity to attain success no matter what situation you might be born into.In a recent paper titled, academics at Bocconi University and Rockwool Foundation and Stockholm University explored how poverty persists across generations in multiple countries.
The researchers' measure of persistence of poverty in the US is 0.43, which means that"experiencing all of one's childhood in poverty is associated with a 43 percentage point higher mean poverty exposure during early adulthood ." In Denmark, in contrast, it's just 0.08. The researchers found this difference between countries has little to do with differences in quality of education, nor is it based on racial discrimination or location, with the persistence of poverty in the US high across racial and geographic lines.
"The U.S. is the archetype of a liberal and residualist welfare state, featuring stratified access to higher education and employment, strong earnings returns to higher education, and a comparatively weak welfare state to insure against risks in adulthood," the researchers said.