SOCIAL SCLEROSIS.

A recent Economist editorial raises the possibility that upward mobility in the United States isn't what it used to be.

Members of the American elite live in an intensely competitive universe. As children, they are ferried from piano lessons to ballet lessons to early-reading classes. As adolescents, they cram in as much after-school coaching as possible. As students, they compete to get into the best graduate schools. As young professionals, they burn the midnight oil for their employers. And, as parents, they agonise about getting their children into the best universities. It is hard for such people to imagine that America is anything but a meritocracy: their lives are a perpetual competition. Yet it is a competition among people very much like themselves—the offspring of a tiny slither of society—rather than among the full range of talents that the country has to offer.

Perhaps it is the Economist's writer who is examining a tiny sliver of society. There is little difference in lifetime earnings of graduates of the less famous universities compared with similarly-capable individuals with more nameworthy degrees. That's not where the meritocracy comes unglued.

America's engines of upward mobility are no longer working as effectively as they once were. The most obvious example lies in the education system. Upward mobility is increasingly determined by education. The income of people with just a high-school diploma was flat in 1975-99, whereas that of people with a bachelor's degree rose substantially, and that of people with advanced degrees rocketed.

The education system is increasingly stratified by social class, and poor children have a double disadvantage. They attend schools with fewer resources than those of their richer contemporaries (school finances are largely determined by local property taxes). And they have to deal with the legacy of what Michael Barone, a conservative commentator, has labelled “soft America”. Soft America is allergic to introducing accountability and measurement in education, particularly if it takes the form of merit pay for successful teachers or rewards for outstanding pupils. Dumbed-down schools are particularly harmful to poor children, who are unlikely to be able to compensate for them at home.

Villainous Company (via Robert at Signifying Nothing) suggests there is another omitted variable.

Nor, when they cite the supposed decline in social mobility since the 1970's, does the Economist once mention the flood of illegal immigration that has dramatically impacted America in the past three decades. One would think this factor might, perhaps, be germane.

I believe it is, but don't have the numbers to hand at the moment. William at Truck and Barter offers additional criticism.

Andrew Sullivan simply asks, "Meritocracy in Trouble?" I will repeat an observation from last year: it is difficult to take seriously any lamentations about social stratification from opinion magazines with a strong propensity to hire graduates from the same twenty or thirty universities.