My Children Will Be Better Off Than Me – a series on American values

November 17, 2025 Mark Orton Capitalism, Delusion, Family, Inequality, Insecurities 0

A cherished part of our national culture has long been the belief that parents can improve their children’s future through better education, hard work, and passing down wealth across generations. Effort and persistence would ensure that the next generation is better off.

Children born in the 1940s were likely to earn more than their parents at a rate of 90% rate.1 In contrast, only 50% of children born in the 1980s earn more than their parents. The evidence clearly shows that this aspect of the American dream is moribund.

This trend directly reflects the enormous growth in income and wealth inequality of the last fifty years. Beginning in the Reagan years (1981-1989), the rich and corporations supported by conservative politicians in both the Republican and Democratic parties passed legislation and changed regulations that altered the distribution of gains in the US economy. This has produced the $79 trillion shift of income from the bottom 90% of the population to the top 10% with the vast bulk ending up in the hands of the top 1%.

 

Footnotes

  1. Raj Chetty et al., “The Fading American Dream: Trends in Absolute Income Mobility Since 1940,” NBER Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research, December 2, 2016), http://www.nber.org/papers/w22910.

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