You or somebody you know may be interested. The Boston Globe reported this week:
“Boston’s rate of economic mobility is second only to San Francisco’s and is tied with the rate in Minneapolis, but it’s harder to get ahead than it used to be. People born in Massachusetts in 1940 had a 91 percent chance of earning more than their parents by the time they were 30. Those born in 1980, however, had a 55 percent chance of doing so.
The middle class is also shrinking, with 15,000 fewer middle-income households in Greater Boston in 2014 than in 1990. Meanwhile, the number of low-income households increased by 30,000 as the number of high-income households rose by 43,000. Housing costs play a huge role in driving people out. Rent is considered affordable when it is less than 30 percent of a person’s income, but the median rent of $2,613 gobbles up more than half of the $61,267 median household income, according to the report. In all of Boston, only 20 of 170 residential census tracts have median rents that are considered affordable for households making the median income…”
Remember your introductory economics class from college. Median and average are different. Median household income is the amount that divides the number of households into two equal halves. Average household income is the total income of all households divided by the number of households. When the number of higher-income households increases, the average is dragged upward making average earnings appear better than they really are for most households.
Economic mobility is the capacity for persons — or in this study, households — to rise to a higher income level or social position. The report cautioned that while Boston has one of the highest rates of economic mobility:
“Even when lower-income households are able to lift themselves out of poverty, a small setback like an illness or a rent increase is enough to push them back down…”