Why Life Choices are key to Upward Mobility

And why we need to start talking about them

In my book series and this Substack column, I argue in favor of a Progress-based reform agenda focused on the following principles:

1. Promote long-term economic growth (this is what I call “promoting progress”, the topic of my second book)

2. Create a prosperous working class.

3. Promote a clear pathway that enables youths from low-income families to enter the prosperous working class.

The last two principles are promoting Upward Mobility, the topic of my forthcoming book: Upward Mobility: A Radical New Agenda to Uplift the Poor and Working Class. In this post, I will focus on the third principle: Promote a clear pathway that enables youths from low-income families to enter the prosperous working class.

What factors enable youths from low-income families to experience Upward Mobility?

In a previous article, I made the case that the American class system can be best understood using the following four criteria:

• Age

• Education (particularly those with a four-year college degree and those that do not)

• Work status (whether a full-time worker is in the household)

• Marital status

When I break down American households based on these critical characteristics, I get something that looks like this:

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In the previous article, I explained the characteristics of each group. In this article, I want to explain how youths enter one of the three classes that are available to them. To do so, I want to introduce two key concepts:

• Life Choices

• Life Trajectory

Life Choices

The first concept that I would like to introduce is “Life Choices”. A Life Choice is:

“a decision made by an individual that has a profound effect on their future material standard of living.”

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See more articles on Upward Mobility:

1. Why achieving Equality is an Impossible Dream

2. Why Progress and Upward Mobility should be the goal, not Equality

3. Why Equality of Opportunity is not enough

4. Upward Mobility in the USA (1947-1965)

5. Why Life Choices are key to Upward Mobility (this article)

6. The Traditional Pathway to Success

7. Constructing a modernized Pathway to Success

8. The Pathway to Success

9. The case for Upward Bound accounts

10. The case for a Working Family Tax Credit

11. more

I also will be writing a significant number of excerpts from my forthcoming book: Upward Mobility: A Radical New Agenda to Uplift the Poor and Working Class. Most of these excerpts will only be available to paid subscribers.

Other books in my “From Poverty to Progress” book series:

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