America's downward mobility

I haven't touched on the subject of the dwindling middle class since my Oct. 21 post. This article is apropos of that thirty-year trend - the growing income gap, financialization of the economy, deindustrialization, job exportation, etc. - but focuses on how the situation is affecting college enrollment. A key passage from the article:

The Philadelphia-based Pew research group compared the outcomes of young people in 10 western countries, in a project called Does America Promote Mobility as Well as Other Countries? It found the US had the strongest link between family wealth and educational success - and the lowest mobility. Advantage and disadvantage were being further amplified in education. Research manager Diana Elliott says in the US "income has a pervasive hold on mobility".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20154358