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Grant Johansen

Mrs. Kitamura

English 1010

1 November 2022

Analysis paper of the American Dream

It is at times assumed that the American dream is a given in the United States. Yet, the

issue is more complicated than it may at first seem. The American dream is often used

interchangeably with the economic ladder and how one ascends it. The debate on the viability of

the dream is quite vast. I will touch on three important parts of the economic ladder and give

discussion to different authors with their own varying perspectives. The first concerning topic is

education's role and effects concerning economic growth between different rungs of said ladder;

the second is economic connectedness and how it affects a person's ability to build personal

wealth; the third is about the individual side of things, more specifically gender and willpower.

This paper will now expand upon each of these subjects further.

Education

Education is a large factor in economic stories, yet many people have differing opinions

on the benefits for education. There are many discussions ranging from the benefits of college to

whether or not people should even attend.

The benefits of college are highly debated. It is often argued that college is a net benefit;

essentially saying that any person that decides to attend college and successfully gets a degree

will rise in the economic ladder. A group of researchers at The PEW Charitable Trusts wrote an

article called “Pursuing the American Dream: Economic Mobility Across Generations,” which

found this to be mostly true. They did however find the benefits to be different depending on
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what kind of financial situation a person is in. For example a person who would be considered to

be financially poor would have a much greater benefit from a college degree. It would even

remove what The PEW called “stickiness at the ends” (2). The stickiness makes it difficult to

move between rungs economically. PEW also found that a college degree would keep people on

the top of the economic ladder where they were; “promotes upward mobility from the bottom

and prevents downward mobility from the middle and top” (3). A good way of explaining what

PEW found would be to say that a college degree acts like a safety net, because it helps keep one

from falling down in economic status.

Yet, two other researchers, Richard V. Reeves and Eleanor Krause, wrote “Raj Chetty in

14 charts: Big findings on opportunity and mobility we should all know” and found slightly

different results. Reeves and Krause also found that a college degree would benefit a person with

lower status economically speaking in the same ways that PEW found. However, a difference

appears when speaking of people with high economic status. Reeves and Krause found that if a

rich person were to get a college education they would fall downward on the economic ladder,

“A college education acts as a leveler, dramatically reducing the correlation between parents’

income and the adult incomes of their children. This is true for elite colleges, other four-year

institutions, and community colleges” (Reeves, Krause). Colleges essentially act as one big

equalizer and would put everyone towards the middle class. This puts Reeves and Krause in a

position against the rich going to college.

Some people believe that there might not even be a need for anyone to go to college. A

man named Adam B. Coleman, who wrote “There's no greater dream than the American Dream -

and anyone can attain it,” found in his own life experience that anyone can achieve economic

growth or in other words the American dream and that it “isn’t given ⁠— it’s earned” (Coleman).
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His point being that with enough hard work economic success is achievable for anyone and that

the ways people achieve it won't always be the same. Coleman believes in seeking more

knowledge from mentors rather than colleges and then even after that the only person one really

has to rely on is oneself, “I quit waiting for other people and started trusting myself” (Coleman).

His assertion is important to economic growth because although it may not be rooted in statistics

it represents a large part of the debate concerning the economic ladder and the things that affect

it.

Economic connectedness

Education of course doesn't solely take place in the classroom. In today’s modern society

there are many ways to learn effectively. With a strong knowledge of researching and studying

someone could learn more about a subject online than they would have in a classroom. However

the internet is still a limited resource and is why economic connectedness is such an important

factor when discussing economic growth. Much of what people learn is passed down through

mentor figures in their lives, and because people pass down knowledge the economic class is

passed down as well. However these things can be overcome depending on the setting.

Growth economically often is portrayed as becoming extremely rich in America. In some

cases to become extremely wealthy would be to achieve the American dream. Many of the ways

the dream is accomplished is through a massive breakthrough; someone goes from zero to

one-hundred on the economic scale because of some brilliant idea. The truth is, most of what

people learn is what's passed on to them from mentor-like figures and the first mentor-like

figures most people have in their lives would be their parents. Now of course this can vary from

person to person, but parents will share what they know economically in hopes that their child

might rise to be further along than they were. Overall making the mental know-how required to
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rise up the ladder largely limited to what the parents know. Authors Reeves and Krause found

this to be true and said that “the truth is that inventors, at least as measured by patent acquisition

by the age of 30, are much more likely to have been raised in an affluent family.” They are

reiterating that knowledge is passed down from generation to generation and that because of this

the odds of someone not being rich and suddenly making it isn’t very high.

The dynamic of mostly learning economic growth from parents is an attributing factor to

why it is so difficult for people to move up and down economic rungs; the PEW’s “stickiness at

the ends” (2). Even so, parents are not the only ones that are able to give economic advice to

people; so the question becomes why is there still a strong gravity at the economic poles? PEW

explains that “high earners are forming unions with other high earners” (12). If it’s the case that

the people on the top are solely conversing with others at the top then those in the bottom and

middle rungs would be left to converse with themselves; reinforcing the “stickiness at the ends”

idea once again (2).

Yet it bleeds into something another author talks about as well. Greg Rosalsky, who wrote

“Why the American Dream is more attainable in some cities than others,” talks about what he

calls “friending bias.” This is the term that he has given for when people are only interacting

with others of similar economic status. However Rosalsky found a study that showed different

areas and communities would participate in this practice at different levels, “There are some

settings where friendship bias is really low, like the workplace and recreational groups. In

churches, mosques, and synagogues, they find, it actually seems to be slightly negative,

suggesting that low-income folks tend to form friendships with high-income folks at a really high

rate in those settings” (Rosalky). If someone was to have a strong understanding of friendship

bias, they would be more likely to combate it by entering into these different communities. It
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would simply then be up to the individual to spark conversations about economic growth and

how one might go about achieving it.

Individualistic effects

Even regarding the different places one could live and different ways one could

accumulate knowledge, differences in gender could prove to be more damaging. Some studies

have found that poor men do worse than poor women economically. Yet, these studies have also

found that rich men do better than poor women. Even together however, some believe these

differences don’t matter when it comes to the totem pole that is economics.

Economic growth is determined by comparing a parents income to their child’s at the

same age. However, this method doesn’t always work as boys and girls are affected differently

economically speaking. Raj and his team explained it like this, “women’s individual earnings

differs because of the rise in female labor force participation rates and earnings over the period

we study” (405). In other words, it’s difficult to compare women in general to their fathers

because of the history behind women in the workforce. They haven’t yet been in the workforce

long enough to hold sufficient data.

Besides that boys have a higher chance of feeling the effects of lower rungs than girls.

Reeves and Krause put it this way, “Boys who grow up in low-opportunity places feel the effects

much more strongly than girls.” Essentially saying that boys will struggle more at the bottom

with economic growth than girls. These effects that were mentioned include being “less likely to

work” and even dying a “decade earlier” (Reeves, Krause). Because economic growth is

dependent on how much money someone makes, not working in some fashion makes it virtually

impossible to climb up the ladder. All of which is on top of the fact that these boys will probably

have less time to do so because of statistically lower life spans.

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To add to all of this, the economic compatibility between sons and their fathers has

shown to be decreasing from generation to generation. Raj Chetty and his research team find the

chances of the son making more money than their father did “fell steeply from 95% in 1940 to

41% in 1984” (405). This is from the article they wrote called “The fading American dream:

Trends in absolute income mobility since 1940.” Most boys weren’t making more money than

their fathers back then and if we assume that this trend has continued over the next forty years,

almost all boys aren’t making more money than their father. These points give a pretty bleak

picture, economically speaking, for males but truth is, it’s not all bad.

When considering the top of the ladder the pattern persists. PEW points out that, “Sons

raised by top earners are the most likely to be top earners themselves” (11). Meaning that those

with the highest economic level often will raise their children to achieve or hold the same level.

Now if this is the case one might assume that the middle would be more neutral. PEW confirmed

this when they found that boys in the middle class were “about equally likely to make more than

their fathers as they are to make less” (10). So, it seems that if a boy is born into the bottom or

top class of the economy then it would be a safe bet to say that they will stay there. If they were

born in the middle however it would be about a fifty-fifty chance of them rising or falling.

Now, although the statistical knowledge is great, some people believe that who one

person is determines growth economically. This is a fair point, afterall it is not 100% of men that

don’t rise from the bottom and not 100% of men fall from the top. Coleman is one of these

people who maintain that regardless of what is statistically happening growth can be

accomplished by focusing on build up one’s self, “To achieve the American Dream, you must

make yourself as valuable as possible by building your skill sets and learning from people who

are more intelligent and successful than yourself while gaining experience along the way”
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(Coleman). To him, and those that would agree, the whole idea of economic success is not

something that is easy or a given, but something that is competitive and focus driven.

This message can be very inspirational for some people. An author of the New York

Times, named Jazmine Ulloa, wrote “How a Storied Phrase Became a Partisan Battleground.”

She points out that America's dream of economic success has become a political tool in which

politicians encourage people to do the same as what Coleman has said. She found that

Republicans have been using this phrase deeply to inspire others to join their cause, “The

Republicans relying on the phrase show the extent to which the party is diversifying its ranks and

recruiting candidates with powerful come-from-behind stories” (Ulloa). Although Ulloa would

disagree with Republicans fundamentally she does see the value that their use of the American

dream has had. At the very least she sees that people love the idea of economic growth. She

would probably argue that these stories simply are far and few in between. Her and Coleman

would heavily disagree with the reason why this is. Overall causing an economic subject to

become a political clash of personal struggle. One side claims statistics don’t define the character

and ability of a person, while the other says that the probabilities hold true.

All together it's apparent that boys struggle more than girls at the bottom levels, but it’s

also known that they will do better at staying on top. In a way giving a luck of the draw vibe;

such a thought however would be disputed by Coleman. His belief in personal vigor and strength

is something that he thinks can overcome the natural tide of what regular people do. Even though

people who would agree more with Ulloa see that sometimes Colemans beliefs hold true, they

would also argue that these stories are simply disparities in the overall study of economic

growth.

Conclusion
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In essence, many different opinions fill the discussion about various topics concerning

economic growth in the United States. These topics have included the effects of different kinds

of education, the connections that have been made between people, and the individual. All of

these things are important to Americans because they help them to understand not only the

circulating conversation but it builds an understanding on how they might go about growing

themselves economically or even staying high on the economic ladder.

Further Inquiry

Something that I haven’t found to be talked about very much while conducting research

for completing the American dream was the overall way money and the way it works has

changed in America. Much of the data that I found to be presented was in comparison to data

collected as far back as the 1940s, yet much has changed since then. The question of how one

would complete the American dream is a lot more complicated than at first imposed. Our money

systems have changed, after all there was a time when America’s money was based in gold. I

would be querios to see if switching away from that has had any sort of negative influence on the

economic economy. I would also like to see more talk about inflation and its role as I only found

two articles that slightly mentioned inflation.

A second topic that I would like to see more discussion on would be the mental health

state of Americans since the 1940s. Mental health has the potential to have a strong link to an

American’s ability to make money as lower mental health is known to lower morale and

productivity. Such findings could present new trails of thought in the discussions about the

American dream and about how one would go about achieving it.
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Works Cited

Rosalsky, Greg. “Why the American Dream is more attainable in some cities than others.” NPR,

1 August 2022,

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2022/08/01/1114661467/why-the-american-dream-is

-more-attainable-in-some-cities-than-others

Clemons, Adam. “There’s no greater dream than the American Dream — and anyone can attain

it.” New York Post, 4 July 2022,

https://nypost.com/2022/07/04/than-the-american-dream-and-anyone-can-attain-it/

Ulloa, Jazmine. “How a Storied Phrase Became a Partisan Battleground.” New York Times, 21

August 2022,

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/us/politics/republicans-american-dream.html

Reeves, Richard, and Krause, Eleanor. “Raj Chetty in 14 charts: Big findings on opportunity and

mobility, we should all know.” Bookings, 11 January 2018,

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2018/01/11/raj-chetty-in-14-char

ts-big-findings-on-opportunity-and-mobility-we-should-know/

Chetty, Raj, et al. “The fading American dream: Trends in absolute income mobility since 1940.”

Science, 24 April 2017, https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aal4617

Urahn, Susan, et al. “Pursuing the American Dream: Economic Mobility Across Generations.”

PEW, July 2012,

https://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/reports/econo

mic_mobility/pursuingamericandreampdf.pdf