Intergenerational Social Mobility

Land of the free home of the brave, an all encompassing American dream has been set out as the goal for all Americans today. A simple equation of education, hard work, dedication and skill is to be summed up into a simple escalation on the social ladder. This simple equation should yield results so that any American can lead the life of a true united states citizen. Yes, these claims are catered to the general public but what comes into question is the reality of it. Social mobility is defined as “the movement of individuals from one social position into another. Intergenerational social mobility is a measure of the extent to which parents and their children have similar or different social and economic positions in adulthood. Upward mobility
Usually immobility means that people remain in the same social and economic situation that they are born into (in other words, in the same class or income group as their parents” (Pearson). Most would think that as long as you put in the hard work and dedication you can be number one and make top dollar, but the reality is even if you work your hardest if you do not have the social ranking, you will not have the opportunity to even be at that level. There are many reasons to this social immobility, one major key being the lack of money. The reality of money is that it makes most things easier, from attaining the best education to what toilet paper one buys, if you’ve got the money everything is just easier, of course materialistically speaking. Hence the lack of money rooting from the parents leads to a series of unfortunate events, without taking race or gender into account. From this lack of financial stability stems the lack of support in anything that could harm “the now”. What I mean by this is that the lack of financial stability forces a person to work and live in “the now”, therefore delaying anything that is for the future. In a family situation the lack of support for the child to work toward a higher education, would ultimately prohibit them from gaining any asocial mobility after this point. Another key factor in
If everyone, regardless of their social background, has similar chances of success in life as an adult, we could say that opportunities are truly equally distributed, and only merit and hard work are rewarded” (Pearson 10.3).
“In a World” …the statement stated in the beginning of every unrealistic movie, clarifying the fact that we have yet to live in a perfect world where social mobility would be a simple equation of effort, skill, and dedication.

Let us come back to the ‘All American Dream’, this dream was meant for you and me, and anybody in between, rich, poor, black, white, Christian, Muslim, whatever one identifies as should not be he barrier between them and achieving a better way of life. The root and the only place to start adjusting this social ladder is by working toward equal opportunities for all children across social classes so that they may move on up and bring better life to their own children and leave an everlasting impact on generations to come raising the value of education, hard work and