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While education levels in the U.S. have risen in recent years, students from disadvantaged backgrounds have fallen behind other Americans in college attainment amid increasing college dropout rates. The causes of this growing gap include weaker academic preparation in their K-12 years (and earlier); lower wealth and liquidity that make it harder to pay tuition and other costs; worse information about and lower familiarity with higher education; and pressure to work full-time while being enrolled to help support their families. In addition, disadvantaged college students are heavily concentrated in weaker and under-resourced institutions such as community colleges, which generate fewer graduates. Even when students gain credentials like associate degrees, the degrees often do not have strong labor market value because of students’ poor labor market information and the weak incentives of public institutions to respond to the labor market by creating more classes in high-demand fields. And high-quality career and technical education opportunities in the U.S., such as “sectoral” training and work-based learning, have not been developed to the extent possible to provide students a wider range of pathways to careers from which to choose. Efforts to improve these outcomes must therefore focus on three goals: (1) improving completion rates at our public colleges by strengthening student supports; (2) expanding postsecondary options, at the bachelor’s level or below, that have labor market value; and (3) developing additional pathways to good-paying jobs through work-based learning and high-quality career and technical education, beginning in secondary schools.

There is surprisingly little research on American norms of economic inequality and opportunity, particularly in the era of rising inequality since the 1980s. In this chapter, I describe three political and policy responses to problems of inequality and opportunity and examine how they square with public opinion. Each approach is characterized by a particular mix of views concerning inequality (of outcomes) on the one hand and opportunity on the other. The “equalizing opportunity” approach places greater emphasis on equalizing opportunities than on equalizing outcomes, and even goes so far as opposing the equalization of outcomes in principle. This approach tends to be more identified today with conservatives than with liberals, but it has had broad-based appeal for much of American history. The “equalizing outcomes” approach places greater emphasis on equalizing outcomes than on equalizing opportunity, but it embraces both. It typically sees the goal of equalizing opportunities as being met implicitly through government tax and transfer policies that reduce disparities in disposable income. This approach is identified strongly with liberals. The “equalizing outcomes to equalize opportunity” approach is the one introduced in this chapter as the most consistent with public norms today. It occupies the middle of the political spectrum and fuses concerns about both opportunity and inequality. The way forward is to eschew a one-sided focus on either equal outcomes or equal opportunities so that Americans’ views are better reflected in both political discourse and public policy.

While the U.S. is a world leader in opportunity rhetoric, it is something of a laggard for opportunity metrics. Indicators are necessary to guide policy, drive data collection strategies, and measure progress. We need clear concepts and credible indicators of opportunity to have an idea of whether we have “restored” it or if we are even headed in the right direction. Right now, indicators are the poor relation of the policy-making process, lacking either the immediacy of strong rhetoric or the tangibility of policies and programs. Indicators are the missing link in our attempts to promote equal opportunity, which is unavoidably an American vision of fairness. This chapter argues for a definition of opportunity based on intergenerational relative mobility and describes current levels of mobility, as well as the relationships between mobility patterns and family structure, education, and race. It also provides a brief history of the social indicators movement in the U.S. and outlines some of the theoretical terrain of indicator development. The chapter goes on to describe two current examples of indicator frameworks—from the United Kingdom and Colorado. Finally, it proposes four specific reforms to elevate the role of indicators in the promotion of opportunity: setting a long-term Goal for Intergenerational Mobility; a “dashboard” of Annual Opportunity Indicators; an American Opportunity Survey; and a Federal Office of Opportunity.

After spending a decade as a journalist writing about rising income inequality and 2 years as an elected politician trying to do something about it, the author is convinced that the best chance that progressives have of bending the arc of the twenty-first century economy is with a message of inclusive prosperity. That means wholeheartedly embracing capitalism while ensuring that the wealth it creates is broadly shared. It also means embracing capitalists and convincing them that they, too, will benefit when others get a bigger slice of the pie. The moment is ripe for action. But a confrontational strategy of framing the plight of the twenty-first century middle class as a zero-sum political battle, one where the plutocrats have been winning at everyone else’s expense, is not the answer. The stunning 2015 election failure of Great Britain’s Labour Party serves as evidence to that effect. Most Americans understand that capitalism works as an economic system—just not as a social one—and that many of our most successful capitalists are the people responsible for its effectiveness. Thus the key is for plutocrats to realize it is in their best interest—and everyone else’s—to participate in the solution by paying higher taxes. Such a stance has precedent. In the post-World War II era, civic-minded American business leaders were willing to advocate and pay increased taxes even though rates were much higher than they are now.