Facing South, Moving Up: Why the South’s Future Depends on Upward Mobility

Executive Summary

Of all the children born in the 1940s, over 90% ended up making more money than their parents. That is true of only 50% of today’s adults. For more and more Americans, the aspiration of doing better than one’s parents, or that one’s children will do better than they did, is out of reach: a fundamental challenge to the American promise of upward mobility. Nowhere is upward mobility more out of reach than the South, where fewer than 1 in 20 children born poor will reach the top quintile during their lifetime. Moving chronologically through a person’s lifespan, this paper identifies three key “mobility points” at which someone’s prospects at upward mobility are determined and where policy interventions can help them succeed. The first section describes the lifelong impacts of early childhood education on a person’s economic prospects. The second section details the relationship between post-secondary education options and a person’s ability to succeed in the modern workforce. The third section illuminates the economic impacts of healthcare access, particularly in rural communities. The final section places the paper’s analysis within the framework of targeted universalism and outlines the sky-high potential that Southern communities can meet when they invest in upward mobility. In sum, this paper finds that making these investments will make the South an economic powerhouse where all people thrive.

Key Takeaways

• Intro: Of all the children born in the 1940s, over 90% ended up making more money than their parents. That is true of only 50% of today’s adults. Nowhere is upward mobility more out of reach than the South, where fewer than 1 in 20 children born poor will reach the top quintile during their lifetime. In no developed country where data are available is the rate of mobility so low.
• Invest in Children, Watch Them Grow: Children with access to high-quality childcare and pre-K experience higher earnings as adults and various other positive downstream effects. However, in many parts of the South, childcare is unavailable or, for many center-based childcare options, prohibitively expensive. For this and other reasons, many families prefer home-based childcare options—but home-based providers face significant financial and regulatory barriers, interfering with their ability to fill childcare gaps. Policy interventions should focus on improving access to childcare across the board, including universal pre-K and reforms to the home-based childcare regulatory process.
• On the Fast Track: Graduating from high school and completing a post-secondary degree causally increase a person’s earnings and job opportunities. However, low-income students and students of color are less likely to graduate from high school, and higher education is increasingly unaffordable for many of the students who would stand to benefit most from a degree. Policy interventions should focus on identifying the students at risk of dropping out and providing them with targeted support while increasing public investment in higher education to increase affordability and accessibility.
• Healthy Places, Healthy Communities: Access to adequate healthcare makes upward mobility possible, yet in many rural communities, poor insurance coverage and hospital financing structures have caused hospital closures and severe coverage gaps, which hinder people’s ability to succeed economically. Policy interventions, including Medicaid expansion, should focus on closing coverage gaps and ensuring that rural hospitals can serve as sources of healthcare and economic activity in their communities.
• Meeting Our Potential: The framework of targeted universalism enumerates an ideal that we all hold (e.g. all children should have access to a high-quality early childhood education), determines whether there are racial or other disparities in meeting that ideal, then identifies policy interventions that close disparities and improve outcomes for everyone. Through a targeted universalist approach to investing in upward mobility, the South has the potential to establish itself as an economic powerhouse where all people thrive.