A Book Review
Edited by Alan Jenkins and Brian Smedley, All Things Being Equal: Instigating Opportunity in an Inequitable Time, is the first publication of a new organization that they run, The Opportunity Agenda.
Although 80% of Americans believe the United States is still a land of opportunity, recent studies of mobility between generations and a score of failures of opportunity in specific markets say that it isn’t so. Old Europe is looking better right now than the New World.
Boasting a number of respected research authors, the book’s chapters include both critique and alternatives. Jared Bernstein kicks it off with an incisive study of the challenges of advancing beyond your current wealth quintile. Linda Darling-Hammond explores the role of quality education in expanding opportunities to achieve your dreams. Marc Mauer examines the effect of mass incarceration on class and racial mobility. (The U.S. is number one in size of prison population in the world.) Philip Tegler treats the hope and reality of using housing mobility programs to move poor households closer to available jobs. Brian Smedley discusses the importance of universalizing affordable health insurance options for the poor, near-poor and middle class. (Without it, families can lose everything, when faced by costly disease or injury.) The book concludes with a thoughtful discussion of the findings of discrimination research today and yesterday and an article outlining an assimilation and upward mobility effort for aiding our newest immigrants.
This is a practical and visionary work that deserves wide readership. And I will be watching for other publications by The Opportunity Agenda.