Richard Reeves of the Brookings Institution has written a flawed but important book about inequality and opportunity in present-day America. According to Reeves’s Dream Hoarders, ours is no longer a mobile society that gives people from all walks of life a fair shot at the American Dream. Although much has been written about the rising fortunes of the top 1 percent over past decades, Reeves’s focus is the highest quintile of the population, the top 20 percent by income and wealth. In his account, people in this tier unfairly “hoard” their privileges. Too many born into affluence remain well-off, and too few from modest backgrounds end up bettering their lot.https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/saving-american-dream/
Reeves is on firm ground in describing the charmed life lived by the upper fifth of society. People in this echelon have pulled away from the rest, with their earnings and wealth steadily increasing in recent decades relative to the larger population. Compared with those lower down on the income scale, those at the top enjoy stable marriages, good health, longevity, safe neighborhoods, superior schools, and steady employment. But according to Reeves, these upper-middle-class Americans have become “dream hoarders.” They have figured out how to preserve their status and pass it on to their offspring. Thanks in no small part to their parents’ advantages, as well as a host of social practices and public policies, the children born to this class are more likely than their peers to graduate from college, especially a selective or prestigious one; attain good jobs; and earn top-quintile incomes themselves. Meanwhile, children born lower on the economic scale struggle to rise, with most never making it into the top 20 percent. To Reeves, this fact alone is deeply unfair and represents a failure of the American Dream.
Dream Hoarders is not just a j’accuse, but a call to action. Something must be done to clear the channels of opportunity, and Reeves recommends that key aspects of private conduct and public policy be structured in service of that goal. But his desire to speed the path upward runs into some serious impediments.
Theorists have long acknowledged, and Reeves agrees, that the main obstacle to social mobility, and indeed to the very existence of a level playing field, is that powerful machine of social reproduction, the family. Compared with those who have less income and education, affluent parents are blessed with a host of advantages, many of which they secure through their choices about how to live their lives. As Charles Murray has noted in his magisterial Coming Apart (to which Reeves only alludes), people in the top tiers are more likely to be well-educated, get and stay married, be dedicated and attentive parents, work hard at their jobs, obey the law, and invest in their communities. They live healthier, more orderly, and longer lives. By contrast, the habits, behaviors, and communities of those lower down on the American totem pole are fast deteriorating, and these trends tell on their children.
Reeves recognizes that these developments are hard to arrest. And he concedes he must meet the challenge of deciding what counts as a legitimate versus an illegitimate advantage, and thus what changes he is willing to recommend to give the less well-off a leg up and make good on his conception of fair opportunity.
He is of two minds about the habits and practices of the upper middle class. He praises affluent parents for their devotion and diligence and the personal attention they lavish on their children, but is concerned that these very virtues tilt the playing field. He doesn’t specify precisely which of their efforts he would leave undisturbed, but they can be surmised from the reforms he proposes. Seeking out safe and pleasant neighborhoods, engaging in enriching activities (including paying for tutoring, lessons, and private schools), helping with homework and college applications, and throwing cash in children’s direction for college, summer support, and even subsidies beyond graduation, would appear to be allowed. But other now-commonplace parental interventions—such as pulling strings to procure jobs—would not.
Reeves also devotes considerable attention to policies and practices that assist well-off families in securing their perch. His main targets are exclusionary zoning, legacy admissions, and unpaid internships. He also provides a familiar laundry list of other proposals, including supplying low-cost, long-term contraception, funding free SAT preparation, eliminating tax credits and savings plans used primarily by higher-income families, and improving lower-income schools by paying teachers more or luring them into less affluent communities.
But is there any reason to believe that these measures will make much difference, especially against the untouchable benefits that privileged parents personally provide? Assessing effects requires taking a harder look at the problem Reeves is purporting to solve.
Reeves claims that the prospects for upward mobility are dismal and deteriorating, at least compared with his benchmark ideal of random sorting, which would have only a fifth of children from each quintile staying where they are. Based on that, he cites data showing that our society has both a “glass ceiling” and a “glass floor”—with more than 20 percent of children born at the top staying there, and significantly fewer in the lower tiers managing to rise. He is also concerned with differences in educational prospects that correspond to income. As befits a member of the elite knowledge class, he has a college fixation and is especially obsessed with children’s unequal chances of ending up at a “selective” college. But the data he cites on educational opportunity and income mobility tell a mixed and equivocal story—one less consistent with “privilege hoarding” than he claims.
Reeves himself admits that mobility rates have never been completely random, and he notes that “scholars are divided on whether relative mobility rates have worsened” since the middle of the 20th century, when the GI Bill sent unprecedented numbers of Americans on to higher education. Moreover, a look at Reeves’s charts reveals that income mobility across quintiles is still substantial, with 20 percent of children born into the bottom fifth rising out of that tier, those born in the middle quintiles as likely to move up as down, and only a minority born into the top tier managing to stay there. Inheritance of educational status is somewhat stickier, but not rigidly so. About 40 percent of those born to parents in the top educational quintile maintain that status, while most in the bottom quintile obtain more years of education than their fathers did.
