Kids’ upward mobility linked to how many adults around them work

In so many aspects of life and work, who you know matters a lot. That’s true for kids, too.

A new study this week from researchers at Opportunity Insights at Harvard and the Census Bureau finds that kids have a better chance at moving up the economic ladder if most of the adults in their lives are employed — and not just the adults in their own household.

We’ve long known that where you grow up has a huge influence on your life economically and otherwise. It turns out, who you’re around does, as well.

“If you’re growing up in a community where parents of your own race and class group are working at lower rates, that seems to have an adverse impact on your outcomes in adulthood,” said Benny Goldman, an assistant professor at Cornell who worked on the study.

On the flip side,” children who move young to areas, where folks in their own social community tend to be working at high rates, tend to do better as adults,” he said.

If most of your friends’ and classmates’ parents are employed, that makes a big difference.

“It kind of goes against our sense of individual autonomy. Like, ‘if I work hard and do the right things I’m gonna do well,'” noted Steven Brown with the Aspen Institute’s Financial Security Program. “It’s not just all about you and your family, it’s about neighborhoods, it’s about networks.”

And it’s about class. Race is less important than it once was to kids’ prospects for upward mobility, according to Raj Chetty, a professor at Harvard and one of the researchers.

“While race is becoming less important, class is becoming more important in America,” he said. “There’s a bigger and bigger divergence if you grow up in a poor family versus a rich family.” Or if you grow up in a poor community versus a rich one.