Downward Shift in Mobility

The purpose of this paper is to critically explore and discuss the sociological problems facing the forty-six million Americans, aged eighteen to twenty-nine, who were born between 1964 and 1975. It will be the thesis of this paper that this generation is experiencing a downward shift in mobility which, for the first time, finds them unable to duplicate, let alone surpass, their own parents' standard of living. This paper will attempt to shed some light on the forces that brought this into existence and the likely course this phenomena will take.

Frank Levy has noted that, by accident or design, articles reviewed in daily newspapers gave rise to a sense that American income inequality was growing (Levy, 1-2). This sense had been building for over a decade and had generated a list of fears as follows: (1) American families are splitting apart into the rich and the poor while the middle class vanishes, (2) The American job market is developing two tiers in which middle-income manufacturing jobs are lost and replaced by a few high-paying jobs and many low-paying jobs in the service sector, (3) Young workers, the baby boomers, are worried that they will not live as well as their parents, and (4) a growing proportion of children are being raised in poverty, and it is arguable that welfare programs themselves are responsible for this poverty through the creation of a growing, dependent underclass (Ibid., 4).

What went wrong? Levy suggests that, like people caught in the midd

Related Essays

Industrial Organization & REITs .... Within an economy which permits labor mobility, no one sector will long lag .... queue, the residual demand curve is determined by a parallel downward shift of the .... (9584 38 )

Physics & OT Equipment .... The speed, downward pressure and degree of angle .... muscle range of motion; joint mobility; muscle strength .... alignment; reaction to weight shift; movement experience .... (2424 10 )

Toward a More Egalitarian Church .... and non-Christian thought (Schaeffer "Encyclical" 3). This shift, albeit not a .... "Downward Mobility." The National Catholic Worker March-April 1998: 1,3. Greeley .... (4332 17 )

Toward a More Egalitarian Catholic Church .... and non-Christian thought (Schaeffer "Encyclical" 3). This shift, albeit not a .... "Downward Mobility." The National Catholic Worker March-April 1998: 1,3. Greeley .... (4332 17 )

Great Depression & Women in the Workplace .... And it appears certain that a palpable shift in the structure of .... employers asserted preferences for white domestic staff.33 The downward mobility factor for .... (4251 17 )

nlarging their benefits" (Lamm, A32). Lamm's voice is not the first to be raised against generational privilege. Mark Featherman, a librarian at the Jewish Theological Seminary, complained about the massive national debt created in the 1980's by a nation unwilling to live within its means. He lamented that it would be his generation faced with payment of the bill: America had a party in the 1980's and we, the twentysomething generation weren't invited. While high flying S & L robber barons were making millions with other people's money, while men of bad conscience were constructing investment houses of paper, we were making our way through college and graduate school, taking out loans to finance our educations. Odd, then, that now that the party's over, we should get stuck with the bill . . . But for those of us just entering the work force, austerity is not something we have chosen; it was chosen for us. The baby boomers have a long-term lock on the upper levels of the marketplace, and we face increased competition for entry level jobs. Who will be made to pay for the good times of the last decade? It doesn't take a genius to figure out that it will be us, the youngest and rawest members of the labor force

Category: Economics - D