BOOKER RISING COMMENTARY: Is The American Dream Eluding Blacks? The Missing Questions And Flawed Methodology

Heads up to reader Mark M. for alerting me to this Washington Post article. Nearly half of black Americans born to middle-income parents in the late 1960s plunged into poverty or near-poverty as adults, according to a new Pew Charitable Trusts 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. However, black Americans have had more difficulty than whites in transmitting middle-class benefits to their children.

The liberal newspaper writes: "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% of whites experienced similar downward mobility. At the same time, 48% of black children whose parents were in an economic bracket with a median family income of $41,700 sank into the lowest income group."

And more: "The Pew reports found that in many ways the American dream is alive and well. Two out of three Americans are upwardly mobile, meaning they had higher incomes than their parents. About half the time, moving up meant not only that they earned more money than their parents, but also that they were better off in relation to other Americans than their parents were. Broken down by race, nine in 10 whites were better-paid than their parents were, compared with three out of four blacks....Overall, family income of blacks in their 30s was $35,000, 58% that of comparable whites, a gap that did not surprise researchers. Startling them, however, was that so many blacks fell out of the middle class to the bottom of the income distribution in one generation."
Buried way deep into the article, almost at the very end, it is noted that observers speculate that the increase in the number of single-parent black households, continued educational gaps between blacks and whites, a huge wealth gap separating white and black families of similar incomes, and racial isolation that remains common for many middle-income blacks.

However, there are quite a few missing questions and some flawed methodology here. Are the Pew reports claiming that these individuals in its longitudinal study declined into poverty and stayed there? Or was it a temporary status for them? It is not clear. I was born in 1970 and grew up middle-class, but yet I have been poor, working-class, middle-class and upper-middle-class as an adult. However, I have not been persistently poor. If persistent poverty is the case for 45% of Generation X blacks, what life choices did these individuals make - such as the significantly higher out of wedlock and crime rates and significantly lower marriage rate of this generation as adults than during their parents' generation - that caused them to persistently decline into poverty? This is not discussed in the Washington Post article. The Pew report does cite the low black marriage rate - coupled with the lack of income growth for black men - among Generation X as a negative trend factor on black family mobility, but the marriage rate is not a control variable in its study. Nor did it control for the other variables that I cite above. However, Pew does plan to do more studies in this area.

Pew acknowledges that unanswered questions remain: "And would the differences remain if the analysis controlled not just for income, but also for educational and occupational status, family wealth, family structure, health status, neighborhood, parental attitudes and behaviors, and other variables?" Of course, the Washington Post article did not even ask these questions.

I also wonder: what did the blacks born into middle-class families who did not become poor or near-poor do (or not do) in life choices as adults that the downwardly mobile blacks did or did not do? In addition to parental attitudes and behaviors, the individuals' attitudes and behaviors matter. This is a missing question and missing control variable not discussed at all in the Washington Post article as possible reasons for the findings, nor has it been studied yet by Pew.

I'd like to know what percentage of the downwardly mobile blacks from middle-class backgrounds flunked one or more - even all five - rules of the anti-poverty formula for America: (1) graduate from high school; (2) don't have children out of wedlock (which especially increases black poverty) and only have the number of children that you can comfortably afford; (3) stay out of jail; (4) don't abuse drugs; and (5) have a decent work ethic and save at least a little bit of your hard-earned money. In my opinion, Generation X blacks have a significantly worse work ethic and a far higher sense of entitlement than The Greatest Generation blacks. Testing for divergent life choices as adults or in parenting style may in fact strengthen the case that it is personal responsibility (or the lack thereof) that determines life chances. This is especially since the actual Pew report states: "Odds of exceeding parental incomes are better for black children from other income groups, but are still substantially lower than those of white children in the same circumstances." This implies that there is more mobility going on than is being portrayed here.

It will be interesting to see Pew test for these missing control variables.