A July 22, 2013 article in the New York Times, In Climbing Income Ladder, Location Matters, provides an excellent summary of a new study by researchers from Harvard and the University of California at Berkeley that has found significant differences in income mobility among poor children based on where they grew up (i.e. where you grow up matters). The chance that a child raised in the bottom fifth of the income quintile would rise to the top fifth ranged from 4% to 11% among the 30 most populous metro areas (Boston ranked 7th at 9.8%). The study also found that children who moved to areas with higher rates of income mobility when they were young were more likely to rise out of poverty than those who moved to such areas as teens or young adults.
Overall, the researchers identified four broad factors that appeared to positively affect income mobility. One was the size and dispersion of the local middle class, with higher rates of upward mobility in metropolitan areas where poor families were more dispersed among mixed-income neighborhoods. Others were more two-parent households, better schools, and more civic engagement. While regions with larger black populations had lower upward-mobility rates, this appeared not to be primarily because of their race but other geographic characteristics. The authors emphasized that their findings were correlational and can’t be interpreted as causal effects. The full study, background materials and data tables can be found at http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/