You do realize that this has been widely studied and reported on for longer than you have been alive, don't you? It literally takes seconds to pop 'economic mo

You do realize that this has been widely studied and reported on for longer than you have been alive, don't you? It literally takes seconds to pop 'economic mobility' into any search engine and within one or two links you are looking at widely cited academic studies using standard methods for measurement of this mobility and all ending up at similar conclusions regarding how economic mobility in the US was never as great as people claimed in the first place and has diminished significantly over the last two or three decades. The field is so broad and deep that papers which we would now describe as meta-analysis go back to the 70s and a quick bounce through citeseer led to a couple of papers from the 50s that might even qualify as such.