Robert Putnam's new book, Our Kids, has some interesting new data and observations: "Do youth today coming from different social and economic backgrounds in fact have equal life chances, and has that changed in recent years?" In other words is the American dream still alive? Can you move from poor to middle class still in America?
"Children with a mom in the bottom educational quartile are likely to live with a single parent at some point in their childhood. They are two times as likely to do this than a college educated parent."
Today over 50% of all US children expected to spend some time in a single parent family before reaching 18. In 1960 this number was only 6%."
"Between 1980 and 2012, US males with college degree, incomes rose 20-56%. For high school dropouts, real income dropped 22% and for a high school graduate it dropped by 11%. For those in the top 1% of incomes, they incomes rose 31%."