# How does income inequality affect social mobility? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 10, 2013, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-income-inequality-affect-social-mobility/652536 "2013-03-10T05:39:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Evil\_Economist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c89c15/32.png) [@Evil\_Economist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Economist)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2013, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-income-inequality-affect-social-mobility/652536/21 "2013-03-11T19:10:26Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > You may have linked to the wrong chart. All that shows is social mobility is inversely correlated with income inequality. That is what I have said all thread. It also shows that diverse countries such as the US, Switzerland, and Singapore have more income inequality than small homogenous countries such as Canada and the Nordic countries. Let’s see; the US has an Ethnic Fractionalization score of 0.490100, a Linguistic Fractionalization score of 0.564700, and a Religious Fractionalization score of 0.824100. [Cite](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_ethnic_and_cultural_diversity_level) Canada has an Ethnic Fractionalization score of 0.712400, a Linguistic Fractionalization score of 0.577200, and a Religious Fractionalization score of 0.695800. [Cite](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_ethnic_and_cultural_diversity_level) So, you claim that the United States is more diverse than Canada, but that seems to be wrong. Whoops. > [@](#): > > Lack of social mobility may be linked to lack of opportunity or it may be linked to meritocracy , no one has produced any evidence that there is less opportunity in american than there used to be or in other countries. OK, let me provide that evidence. [Here’s evidence](http://www.bostonfed.org/economic/wp/wp2011/wp1110.pdf) that social mobility has decreased in the US. And [here’s evidence](http://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/issues/2006/04/Hertz_MobilityAnalysis.pdf) that social mobility is lower in the US than in other countries. Since social mobility is the statistical measure of “opportunity,” I think we’re done here, yes? ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Economist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c89c15/32.png) [@Evil\_Economist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Economist)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2013, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-income-inequality-affect-social-mobility/652536/22 "2013-03-11T19:34:00Z")
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**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2013, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-income-inequality-affect-social-mobility/652536/23 "2013-03-11T19:56:14Z")
> [@Evil\_Economist](#): > > Let’s see; the US has an Ethnic Fractionalization score of 0.490100, a Linguistic Fractionalization score of 0.564700, and a Religious Fractionalization score of 0.824100. [Cite](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_ethnic_and_cultural_diversity_level) > > Canada has an Ethnic Fractionalization score of 0.712400, a Linguistic Fractionalization score of 0.577200, and a Religious Fractionalization score of 0.695800. [Cite](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_ethnic_and_cultural_diversity_level) > > So, you claim that the United States is more diverse than Canada, but that seems to be wrong. Whoops. It’s not so simple as that. [From here:](http://www.dartmouth.edu/~socy/pdfs/measuring_cultural_diversity.pdf) > [@](#): > > Consider ethnic fractionalization. For the most part, the Encyclopaedia Britannica provides the ‘ethnic composition’ for each society in the form of the percentage distribution of ethnic groups for the particular year of observation. The ethnic composition data are most often based on ‘ethnic groups’ but sometimes on either ‘ethnolinguistic groups’ or ‘racial groups’. The particular label for each country is determined by the categories that countries themselves use in their national statistics that is, categories that they believe are salient. The data are most often called ‘ethnic composition’ but in some cases they are conflated with language composition or political definitions of immigrants used within a country. For instance, for the 2000 ethnic data, twenty-two out of thirty countries carry the ‘ethnic composition’ label. However, for four countries (Japan, Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland) the Encyclopaedia Britannica reports ‘ethnic composition by nationality’ and for another four countries it reports ‘ethno-linguistic composition’ (Italy), ‘**composition by race and Hispanic origin’ (United States), ‘composition by ethnic origin’ (Canada)** and ‘composition by place of origin including second generation’ (Holland). The Fearon list used Encyclopedia Britannia data; Encyclopedia Britannica uses data from each nation’s statistics. In the case of the U.S. and Canada, those statistics are comparing very different things, race vs. ethnic origin. Look at [this chart](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_origins_of_people_in_Canada), compiled from Canadian Census data from 2006, then look at [this one](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_United_States#Race_and_ethnicity), from U.S. Census data from 2010. They are not measuring the same thing, for instance, the U.S. counts it’s 72.4%-of-total population of white people as “white”; Canada whacks its [81.4%-of-population](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Canada) white people into ethnic origins by country. This gives the appearance of more diversity, but it’s not directly comparable. American white people have ethnic origins too, as do non-white Americans. As noted, linguistics is a wash, and America is more religiously diverse. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Economist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c89c15/32.png) [@Evil\_Economist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Economist)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2013, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-income-inequality-affect-social-mobility/652536/24 "2013-03-11T20:15:01Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > It’s not so simple as that. [From here:](http://www.dartmouth.edu/~socy/pdfs/measuring_cultural_diversity.pdf) > > The Fearon list used Encyclopedia Britannia data; Encyclopedia Britannica uses data from each nation’s statistics. In the case of the U.S. and Canada, those statistics are comparing very different things, race vs. ethnic origin. > > Look at [this chart](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_origins_of_people_in_Canada), compiled from Canadian Census data from 2006, then look at [this one](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_United_States#Race_and_ethnicity), from U.S. Census data from 2010. They are not measuring the same thing, for instance, the U.S. counts it’s 72.4%-of-total population of white people as “white”; Canada whacks its [81.4%-of-population](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Canada) white people into ethnic origins by country. This gives the appearance of more diversity, but it’s not directly comparable. American white people have ethnic origins too, as do non-white Americans. > > As noted, linguistics is a wash, and America is more religiously diverse. I actually used Alesina’s tables (further down on the same page) Your cite (Patsiurko) gives Canada an Ethnic Fractionalization score of 0.7463, a Linguistic Fractionalization score of 0.6299 , and a Religious Fractionalization score of 0.6079 (all for 1985). And for the United States, scores of 0.2637, 0.2047, and 0.7155 For 2000, the scores in Canada were 0.7261, 0.5920, 0.7041. For the United States in the same year they were 0.4707, 0.2514, 0.8262. I would say that Canada is more diverse than the United States regardless of the measure used (ETA: this is certainly not my area of expertise, and I could easilly be misunderstanding the scores) ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2013, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-income-inequality-affect-social-mobility/652536/25 "2013-03-12T12:06:22Z")
> [@Evil\_Economist](#): > > I actually used Alesina’s tables (further down on the same page) > > Your cite (Patsiurko) gives Canada an Ethnic Fractionalization score of 0.7463, a Linguistic Fractionalization score of 0.6299 , and a Religious Fractionalization score of 0.6079 (all for 1985). And for the United States, scores of 0.2637, 0.2047, and 0.7155 > > For 2000, the scores in Canada were 0.7261, 0.5920, 0.7041. For the United States in the same year they were 0.4707, 0.2514, 0.8262. > > I would say that Canada is more diverse than the United States regardless of the measure used (ETA: this is certainly not my area of expertise, and I could easilly be misunderstanding the scores) Alesina used the same source, just a different year’s edition: > [@](#): > > One of the most ambitious and > widely used of these new indices was created by Alesina et al. (2003) > who developed measures of ethnic, linguistic and religious fractionalization > in 190 countries using more current data from the > Encyclopaedia Britannica Book of the Year (2001), hereafter referred > to in brief as Encyclopaedia Britannica, and other sources. But again > scholars offered criticisms (e.g. Fearon 2003; Posner 2004). First, there > is inconsistency in terms of the years covered. For instance, the > Encyclopaedia Britannica provides ethnicity data for only 124 of 190 > countries, so Alesina had to resort to other sources for the rest. Again, the issue is that Britannica uses official (government) sources, and the official data for the U.S. and Canada are measuring different things (race vs. ethnic origin). Patsiurko at least acknowledges this issue (in the passage I quoted previously), but it remains an issue with comparing the U.S. to Canada. ETA: This isn’t to say that Canada is homogenous in the way that the Scandinavian countries are, but it’s not clear whether Canada is more or less diverse than the U.S., due to the aforementioned data issues. It’s certainly whiter, if nothing else. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2013, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-income-inequality-affect-social-mobility/652536/26 "2013-03-12T16:13:08Z")
> [@Evil\_Economist](#): > > Let’s see; the US has an Ethnic Fractionalization score of 0.490100, a Linguistic Fractionalization score of 0.564700, and a Religious Fractionalization score of 0.824100. [Cite](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_ethnic_and_cultural_diversity_level) > > Canada has an Ethnic Fractionalization score of 0.712400, a Linguistic Fractionalization score of 0.577200, and a Religious Fractionalization score of 0.695800. [Cite](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_ethnic_and_cultural_diversity_level) > > So, you claim that the United States is more diverse than Canada, but that seems to be wrong. Whoops. > OK, let me provide that evidence. [Here’s evidence](http://www.bostonfed.org/economic/wp/wp2011/wp1110.pdf) that social mobility has decreased in the US. And [here’s evidence](http://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/issues/2006/04/Hertz_MobilityAnalysis.pdf) that social mobility is lower in the US than in other countries. Since social mobility is the statistical measure of “opportunity,” I think we’re done here, yes? Social mobility is not the statistical measure of opportunity. It measures homogenity, income inequality, and wealth. It contains too much noise to be useful as measure of opportunity. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-income-inequality-affect-social-mobility/652536.md?page=1)