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Opportunity has long been the bedrock of American society. Today, however, the solid foundation that once grounded the lives of millions is fracturing along economic and social lines. Human capital, encompassing a broad set of cognitive and interpersonal skills, has become increasingly important in determining labor market outcomes as the evolving economic landscape, shaped by the interplay of globalization and technology, as well as governmental and business policies, changes who is working and what they are paid. There is now also a tighter link between human and social capital, which is the set of networks, norms, and values that serve to foster development and success. The strengthening of this relationship has contributed to a polarization in the accumulation of human and social capital that translates into distinctly different life outcomes for individuals. This changing landscape also affects the intergenerational transmission of opportunity, with children’s circumstances at birth becoming more determinative of their prospects as adults. This introduction sets the stage for the chapters that follow, which offer perspectives on opportunity from fields ranging from education and demography to economics and political science. The authors of these chapters, national leaders in their fields, offer their insights into policies and practices that could help us move forward to improve equality of opportunity and better realize America’s values and ideals.

Residential segregation has been called the “structural linchpin” of racial stratification in the United States. Recent work has documented the central role it plays in the geographic concentration of poverty among African-Americans as well as the close connection between exposure to concentrated deprivation and limited life chances. Here we review trends in racial segregation and Black poverty to contextualize a broader analysis of trends in the neighborhood circumstances experienced by two groups generally considered to occupy the top and bottom positions in U.S. society: affluent Whites and poor Blacks. The analysis reveals a sharp divergence of social and economic resources available within the social worlds of the two groups. We tie this divergence directly to the residential segregation of African-Americans in the United States, which remains extreme in the nation’s largest urban Black communities. In these communities, the neighborhood circumstances of affluent as well as poor African-Americans are systematically compromised.

This chapter assesses the history of government efforts in the United States to enhance opportunity in education and to suggest lessons from the past. We focus primarily on federal policy, keeping in mind that solutions must depend upon successfully blending the resources and prerogatives of the federal government, the states, and local school districts. This chapter takes a chronological look, starting at free public education’s onset to provide a foundation for the problems of inequality we face today. It then moves through the expanding federal role in the post-World War II years, followed by the battles over desegregation and the focus on providing resources to disadvantaged students. It then discusses standards-based reform, with a focus on how we arrived at the No Child Left Behind law and the issues surrounding the Common Core. Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which targets impoverished students, is reviewed in detail. The lack of connection between Title I assignments and family income level, as well as lack of connection between Title I assignment and performance on the National Assessment of Academic Progress (NAEP), renders research results inconclusive in judging Title I’s effects, but given that NAEP does show increasing average scores for Black and Hispanic students as well as declining gaps between those groups and White students, the evidence is sufficient that the program should be continued and improved. The chapter concludes by drawing some generalizations about the federalist governance system and its relation to educational equity and offers suggestions on ways to move forward, including changes regarding Title I and the federal role in education.

Over the past several decades, many states have pursued substantive changes to their state school finance systems. Some reforms have been stimulated by judicial pressure resulting from state constitutional challenges and others have been initiated by legislatures. But despite gains in school funding equity and adequacy made over the past few decades, in recent years we have witnessed a substantial retreat from equity and adequacy. This chapter builds on the national school funding fairness report annually published by the Education Law Center. We track school funding fairness (the relative targeting of funding to districts serving economically disadvantaged children) for all states from 1993 to 2012. This chapter explores in greater depth the consequences of school funding levels, distributions, and changes in specific classroom resources provided in schools. We find that states and districts applying more effort—spending a greater share of their fiscal capacity on schools—generally spend more on schools, and that these higher spending levels translate into higher staffing levels and lower class sizes as well as more competitive teacher wages.

Since its founding, America has been seen as a land of opportunity, where an individual with skills who was willing to work hard could achieve success and expect his children to do even better. Today we live in turbulent times: A tsunami of change is washing over us, driven by forces operating at multiple levels that have not only led to almost unprecedented inequalities in income and wealth, but also have dramatically restructured the economy and changed the landscape of work. Having sufficient amounts of relevant human and social capital are more critical than ever—and too many Americans are finding they are not equipped to succeed as workers and citizens. Growing inequities in access to opportunities to develop needed capital, strongly linked to socioeconomic status should be cause for grave concern. This chapter presents a framework—gates, gaps, and gradients—that can facilitate understanding of both the dynamics governing the distribution of access to opportunity across the developmental lifespan and the implications of those dynamics for intragenerational and intergenerational mobility. Further, it indicates in broad strokes how this nation can begin to broaden opportunity in order to revitalize the American Dream for the twenty-first century.

Since the late 1970s, two major developments have occurred regarding wages in the U.S.: the stagnation of real wages for various groups of workers and the increase in wage inequality. This chapter examines these trends in some detail and finds that real wages have performed better for women than men and for the more highly educated relative to those with less educational attainment. However, particularly since 2000, few groups have been spared; even workers with 4-year college degrees have experienced some stagnation in real hourly pay. The chapter examines economic theories of wage determination and finds that while skills often play a critical role in both theory and practice, other important wage determinants, most notably the absence of full employment—the persistently slack labor markets that have prevailed over the stagnation/dispersion period—are often underemphasized. The chapter suggests a number of policy recommendations to offset the problems of wage stagnation and increased wage inequality, including greater skill acquisition as well as policies to promote full employment and strengthen eroding labor standards.

The first 10 years of the 2000s were the worst decade of job-creating performance experienced by the United States in the entire post-World War II era. The unemployment rate skyrocketed as high as 9.6 %, tied with 1982 and 1983 as the highest unemployment rates since the end of the Second World War. Yet the unemployment rate only provides part of the story of the United States’ weak labor market. This chapter goes well beyond the official unemployment statistics to look at the total pool of underutilized labor, including those who are working part time but cannot obtain full-time work (the underemployed) and those who have stopped looking for a job but want to be in the full-time work force (the hidden unemployed). It also rigorously examines the full array of labor market problems among U.S. workers in various education and income groups in 2013–2014 as well as providing relevant comparisons dating back to 1999–2000. We find that widening labor market outcome gaps have contributed to the growth of earnings and income disparities over the decade and a half since 1999–2000. Groups at the top end of the educational and income scales have come to experience virtually full employment and high earnings, while those at the bottom are dealing with unemployment and poverty that have sunk to levels last seen during the Great Depression.

This chapter focuses on how intergenerational mobility is affected by children’s earliest life experiences from conception through preschool. These experiences are important because of their effects on outcomes later in life. One consequence is that intervening early is the most cost-effective way to put a child on course to pass through the gates that determine adult success and thereby reduce differences in mobility among children born in different circumstances. Using a life-cycle model, we examine the evidence on trends in factors that affect child development. The evidence we assess leads to the conclusion that opportunity and mobility are declining for lower and even middle class children as changes in family life, parenting practices, economic inequality, unresponsive social institutions, and increasingly economically homogeneous neighborhoods all point to a serious decline in the factors that are associated with greater mobility. We conclude that the decline in opportunity and mobility for current generations of American children is likely the biggest negative effect of the continuing U.S. inequality boom in income, wealth, and consumption. The paper ends by outlining a series of policies that would help restore opportunity in America by intervening early in the life course.

After briefly reviewing the unequal opportunities outside schools that contribute to the disparities in educational achievement, attainment, and various indicators of adult success, this chapter zeroes in on addressing inequities within K-12 education. We argue that disparities within the educational system are the product of institutional structures and cultures that both disenfranchise certain groups of students and depress quality overall. Systemic causes require systemic solutions, and we envision a three-pronged systemic remedy: a continuous improvement approach for addressing the quality of educational opportunities for underserved students as well as of the system as a whole; targeted high-leverage interventions consistent with the overall approach but focused on key transition points and needs; and stronger connections between schools and other institutions and systems affecting the development and well-being of children and youth. We then outline a change strategy that incorporates both pressure and support for improvement from three distinct but interacting sources: government and administrative policy (federal, state, and local); professional accountability and networking; and collective engagement of parental, community, and advocacy organizations. We end the chapter with a consideration of recent developments in California and the degree to which they lay the groundwork for moving an equity agenda in the state.

Restoring opportunity requires jobs that can generate middle class incomes. Notwithstanding concerns about the declining share of middle-wage jobs, this chapter argues that building a robust apprenticeship system in the U.S. can sharply increase earnings and the share of American workers entering rewarding careers. By emphasizing “learning by doing” as a paid employee, apprenticeships are especially effective in preparing workers to gain a valued occupational qualification. They enhance youth development by providing a more engaging experience than schooling does and by linking young people to mentors. They encourage employers to upgrade jobs and develop job ladders. Apprenticeships currently represent a much smaller share of the workforce in the U.S. than in most other advanced countries. This chapter contends that expanding apprenticeship is feasible and a highly cost-effective strategy for restoring opportunity.