Poor Black Kids Are Doing Better. Poor White Kids Are Doing Worse.

The yawning gap between the mobility of white children and Black children growing up in low-income families has narrowed sharply, according to a major new study released today, based on tens of millions of anonymized census and tax records. Yet the findings are not entirely comforting. Inequality narrowed not just because poor Black kids have grown up to earn more as adults but also because poor white kids are earning less.

Children born in lower-income white families did not fall behind just relative to the gains made by their higher-income white peers or their peers in Black families across the income spectrum. They fell behind in absolute terms. Poor white kids born in 1992 were earning $1,530 less at age 27 than poor white kids born in 1978, after accounting for inflation. Fewer were married, fewer had graduated from college, and more were incarcerated too. Poor Black kids born in 1992, on the other hand, were making $1,607 more than those born in ’78. As a result of these simultaneous shifts, the chance of Black and white kids leaving the lowest-earning income quintile and reaching the middle class converged.