Creating Mobility from Poverty: An Overview of Strategies

W O R K I N G P A P E R Creating Mobility from Poverty An Overview of Strategies David T. Ellwood Mary Bogle Gregory Acs Kelly Mikelson H A R VA R D UN I V E R SI TY U R B A N IN S TI TU TE U R B A N IN S TI TU TE U R B A N IN S TI TU TE Susan J. Popkin U R B A N IN S TI TU TE August 2016 A B O U T T H E U S P A R T N E RS H I P O N M O B I L I T Y F R OM P O V E R T Y With funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Urban Institute is supporting the US Partnership on Mobility from Poverty, chaired by David Ellwood and consisting of 25 leading voices representing academia, practice, the faith community, philanthropy, and the private sector. Partners will consult widely, seeking out diverse voices and expertise as they examine the causes of persistent poverty and stagnant mobility. Ideas will not come only from the Partners themselves: the Partnership will solicit new thinking from innovative leaders, programs, and individuals around the country. The Partnership will learn from communities and families living in poverty, from the nation’s leading service providers and advocates, from a wide network of experts, and from the latest research findings. The Partnership's approach will be geographically agnostic and politically nonpartisan; its findings will be transparent and available to all. Contents Acknowledgments iv Creating Mobility from Poverty 1 Pathways to Prosperity and the Larger Forces That Help Shape Them 1 A Brief Note on the Meaning of Mobility 3 Alternative Strategies to Increase Mobility 5 Fundamental Building Blocks for Promoting Mobility 7 Initiatives Generating Comprehensive Personal or Family Mobility Pathways 11 Place-Conscious Strategies to Create Neighborhoods of Choice and Opportunity 13 Regional, Cross-Sectoral, Jointly Accountable Partnerships 15 Large-Scale Social, Economic, Political, and Institutional Changes 16 Accountability, Informational, and Managerial Innovations 17 Next Steps 19 Notes 20 References 20 About the Authors 21 IV A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S Acknowledgments This report was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. We are grateful to them and to all our funders. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the organizations represented by the 25 members of the US Partnership on Mobility from Poverty or to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders. The authors thank Pamela Loprest, Nisha Patel, Margery Turner, and Sarah Rosen Wartell for their thoughtful comments. The authors are responsible for all errors. C R E A T I N G M O B I L I T Y F RO M P O V E R T Y : A N O V E R VI E W O F S T R A T E G I E S 1 Creating Mobility from Poverty Mobility is the American dream. It is the foundational promise of the nation: through initiative and hard work, anyone can rise from poverty and succeed. Both anecdote and scholarship show unequivocally that at least some people from all walks of life do get ahead and thrive. The American dream also contains an implicit assumption that mobility is readily available regardless of the circumstances of one’s birth, and that such mobility is more common in the United States than in other nations. Sadly, research shows that the United States is not particularly strong on upward mobility for those born at the lower end of the income distribution. The odds of economic advancement differ considerably based on family, race, neighborhood, and other factors. For example, a study from the Brookings Institution showed that the majority of African American children raised in families in the bottom 20 percent of family income did not escape that income category as adults. (More than three-quarters of comparably defined poor white children escaped.) This overview paper broadly outlines the types of strategies being used to help people move up from poverty. It lays out basic categories for classifying such programs, explains the logic of various approaches, and offers some broad pros and cons of various types of interventions. The accompanying paper, Building Blocks and Strategies for Helping Americans Move Out of Poverty, provides a much more detailed discussion, including examples of some well-regarded programs in each category (Bogle et al. 2016). Readers should recognize that in this report, we do not evaluate the alternatives, rank them, or recommend a specific strategy; that work should come later. Rather, this report serves as a road map for those thinking about ways to significantly increase mobility from poverty. Pathways to Prosperity and the Larger Forces That Help Shape Them The move from poverty in its many forms to a life of dignity, inclusion, and middle-class security must be understood as a journey rather than an event. It is a path, often poorly lit, with junctions and obstacles. For any child born in the United States today, success will require navigating a complex combination of risks, bar