The Two Parties Fail to Understand Place-Based Inequality
Democrats and Republicans both have immutable narratives about who is left behind in American life and who deserves the most assistance and political attention. For Democrats, it s black and brown people and for Republicans it s the white working class a sectarian racial battle tailor-made to produce deep schisms and mutual animosity between Americans.
But according to a massive new study of intergenerational income shifts, led by Harvard economist Raj Chetty and colleagues and researchers at the U.S. Census Bureau, both party narratives fail miserably at representing the reality of economic mobility in America today and both miss the critical importance of communities and place-based approaches to helping lower-income people of all races get ahead in life.