For years, public sentiment has viewed the American economy as a machine that freezes people in place. It is a compelling story: clean, bleak and easy to repeat. But it is also too crude. If income mobility means what serious scholars say it means, the more defensible conclusion is that important forms of mobility in the United States have improved since the 1970s, even if unevenly.
A clear definition of income mobility helps. It refers to changes in economic status over time or across generations. That distinction matters because mobility is not the same as inequality at a single point in time. A country can have a wide income distribution in any given year and still experience significant movement within that distribution. If people’s incomes rise, shift between quintiles and improve over the long run, then the economic reality is more dynamic than a static snapshot suggests.
Start with the basics. The United States is far richer than it was in 1970, widening the space for upward movement. The Urban Institute reports that the median U.S. household earns nearly $20,000 more in inflation-adjusted income than it did in 1970. That alone does not prove mobility, but it provides the context in which mobility occurs. A stagnant economy can reshuffle positions without lifting many people. A growing one can do both. The rise in median income means the ladder itself has been raised, not merely repainted.
The strongest evidence for improved mobility comes from long-run earnings, especially when women are fully included as economic participants rather than treated as an afterthought. A major study on U.S. earnings inequality and mobility found that the narrowing gender earnings gap and the resulting increase in women’s upward mobility were the primary drivers of increased long-term mobility for all workers. This is not a marginal detail; it is central.
For women, the probability of moving from the bottom 40% of earners to the top 20% over 20 years rose from less than 1% in the 1950s to about 7% by the 1980s. In broader terms, women’s upward mobility measure increased from 0.008 in 1956 to 0.041 in 1978, while the figure for all workers rose from 0.037 to 0.053. These are not small changes. They represent a fundamental shift in how mobility functions in the U.S. economy.
That transformation is reflected in broader social trends. Pew Research Center reports that in the early 1970s, 43% of women were wage earners; today, nearly six in 10 work for pay. Women’s median wages have risen by 50% or more at every income level compared to the previous generation. Increased work hours are also associated with higher rates of upward mobility in family earnings, particularly for those in the bottom and middle of the distribution.
This matters beyond politics or culture. A society in which millions more women participate in the workforce, gain experience, and contribute to household income has more pathways to upward mobility than one that did not.
Disposable income data reinforces this point. The Congressional Budget Office shows that from 1979 to 2021, average income after taxes and transfers rose across all quintiles. The gains are substantial: roughly 130% for the lowest quintile, about 75% for the middle three, and around 165% for the highest. Top earners indeed gained more in absolute terms. But the relevant question here is whether those at the bottom and middle became more stuck. The answer is no. After taxes and transfers, the floor rose significantly and, in some periods, faster than the middle.
That said, not every measure points upward. Some intergenerational and family-based studies find stability or decline in certain dimensions of mobility, particularly for men or for later-born cohorts. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, for example, finds lower family income mobility in recent decades under certain measures. Research on absolute mobility also shows that fewer children today out-earn their parents compared to the unusually high rates of mid-20th-century America.
These are real concerns and should not be dismissed. Ignoring them would be advocacy, not analysis.
But the dominant narrative still gets the broader story wrong. Since the 1970s, the United States has not been frozen. It has been a complex mobility system with both gains and setbacks. Male mobility weakened in some respects; female mobility expanded significantly. Inequality widened at a point in time, but long-run movement continued. Median real income rose. After-tax incomes increased across all quintiles, including the bottom. And over relatively short periods, a majority of taxpayers moved between income groups.
The right conclusion is neither triumph nor despair. It is that mobility has improved in meaningful ways, driven largely by expanded workforce participation, especially among women, and by rising disposable incomes at the lower end of the distribution.
That is not the whole American story. But it is far more than the decline-only narrative allows.
Dr. Timothy G. Nash is director of the Northwood University Center for the Advancement of Freedom, Free Enterprise and Entrepreneurship. Mr. Anthony Storer is an economics major and scholar at the Northwood University Center for the Advancement of Freedom, Free Enterprise and Entrepreneurship. Mr. Bob Thomas is COO of the Michigan Chamber of Commerce.
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Income mobility in the U.S. has evolved over the years | Opinion
Reporting by Timothy Nash, Anthony Storer and Bob Thomas / The Detroit News
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