Posted on 11/13/2007 6:28:17 AM PST by shrinkermd
Nearly half of African Americans born to middle-income parents in the late 1960s plunged into poverty or near-poverty as adults, according to a new study -- a perplexing finding that analysts say highlights the fragile nature of middle-class life for many African Americans.
Overall, family incomes have risen for both blacks and whites over the past three decades. But in a society where the privileges of class and income most often perpetuate themselves from generation to generation, black Americans have had more difficulty than whites in transmitting those benefits to their children.
Forty-five percent of black children whose parents were solidly middle class in 1968 -- a stratum with a median income of $55,600 in inflation-adjusted dollars -- grew up to be among the lowest fifth of the nation's earners, with a median family income of $23,100. Only 16 percent of whites experienced similar downward mobility. At the same time, 48 percent of black children whose parents were in an economic bracket with a median family income of $41,700 sank into the lowest income group.
This troubling picture of black economic evolution is contained in a package of three reports being released today by the Pew Charitable Trusts that test the vitality of the American dream. Using a nationally representative data source that for nearly four decades has tracked people who were children in 1968, researchers attempted to answer two questions: Do Americans generally advance beyond their parents in terms of income? How much is that affected by race and gender?
"We are attempting to broaden the current debate" beyond the growing gap between higher- and lower-income Americans, said John Morton, Pew's managing director for program planning and economic policy. "There is little out there on the question of mobility across generations, and we wanted to examine that."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I sincerely hope you forgot your sarcasm tag.
Its sometimes necessary to kick the kids out of the house "ready or not". We're long past that time w/ blacks and they're apologists.
Did I miss it? Certainly there must be a “blame Whitey” in there somewhere.
Sorry, but I don’t do PC.
Are you “The Dog”? LOL..
Yeah, there’s a boatload of other ethnic groups in this country too (including Caucasians) where the $500K 2400 sq foot crappy built 1/4 acre lot McMansions American Dream are out of reach.
Marital status?
Bingo. Divorce, cultural changes and pressures, drugs and expansion of welfare programs.
Also, add the rapid decline of the inner cities from the 1960’s.
Becuase they are successful. Other studies look at the Asian populace and declare them to be too successful, that they are not paying their fair share, and that we need to raise taxes to reduce income inequality. These studies are typical pap from the Urban or Brookings Institute and thier ilk.
it’s not a perplexing development if they followed the culture of illegitimacy
No, no, no. There are no "other factors." America is a mean, rotten place -- especially to women, blacks, gays, the working class, and everyone else who isn't a privileged white male.
whatever happened to the myth that if more blacks were midle class, they would vote conservative?
that didn’t pan out so know we say the same about Mexican illegals....lol....oh, and cause they are Catholic too...
naivete in our culture is as high as our depravity....is that a dichotomy or paradox linguists?
You forgot quagmire and culture of corruption.
Yes, and how about illegitimacy? The Washington Post apparently doesn’t think that is important.
Isn’t it something like 2 out of 3? Try raising kids right with those odds.
Is there anything mentioned about the 70% illegitimacy rate among blacks? Any any race/ethnic group with those kind of birth statistics is going to have BIG poverty problems.
When Bill Cosby brought this up, he was defamed and called filthy, hateful names by the Sharpton/NAACP/Jesse Jackson crowd.
Exactly. If you watch the business news, you can always tell who the leftists are. They are either predicting Economic Armageddan or grinning at any sign of a downturn because they know it will rile up the victim mentality.
“You’ve got to stop beating up your women because you can’t find a job, because you didn’t want to get an education and now you’re (earning) minimum wage,” Cosby said. “You should have thought more of yourself when you were in high school, when you had an opportunity.”
“I can’t even talk the way these people talk, ‘Why you ain’t,’ ‘Where you is’ ... and I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk, and then I heard the father talk ... Everybody knows it’s important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can’t be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth.”
— Bill Cosby
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