American Economic Review
ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)
The Opportunity Atlas: Mapping the Childhood Roots of Social Mobility
American Economic Review
(pp. 1–51)
Abstract
We construct a public atlas of mean outcomes in adulthood by childhood census tract. Outcomes vary sharply across neighborhoods: For children whose parents earn $27,000, the standard deviation of mean household income in adulthood is $10,420 across tracts within counties. Only half the variation in outcomes is explained by traditional measures of neighborhood opportunity like poverty rates. Experimental and quasi-experimental estimates indicate 60 percent of the variation in outcomes across neighborhoods is driven by causal effects. We demonstrate how our statistics can be applied to better target policies to improve low-opportunity areas and help families move to affordable high-opportunity areas.Citation
Chetty, Raj, John N. Friedman, Nathaniel Hendren, Maggie R. Jones, and Sonya R. Porter. 2026. "The Opportunity Atlas: Mapping the Childhood Roots of Social Mobility." American Economic Review 116 (1): 1–51. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20200108Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- G51 Household Finance: Household Saving, Borrowing, Debt, and Wealth
- I32 Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
- I38 Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty: Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
- J12 Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure; Domestic Abuse
- R23 Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics: Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population; Neighborhood Characteristics