It's Hard To Make It In America Summary

America has long been known as the “Land of opportunity.” This name was given due to the notion that in this land of freedom, people of socio-economic status would be able to climb the ladder of opportunity and become wealthier. The article “It’s Hard to Make it in America: How the United States Stopped Being the Land of Opportunity” by Lane Kensworthy discusses how America is no longer the land of opportunity and it is becoming larger for poorer people to earn wealth. The idea from the article that I will be focusing on is how being born into a wealthy family significantly increases your likely hood as an adult as opposed to being born into a poorer family. The article states that better off families end up with better educated, with better jobs and marry people with the same economic status. This statement shows the advantages that wealthy children have over poorer children from birth. By being more educated the children of wealthy families grow up, get better jobs and stay at the top of the Socio-economic ladder. Poorer children on the other hand are not as well educated and therefore unable to get a well-paying job and climb the economic ladder. This shows how the families for generations rarely change their position on the Socio-economic ladder, generally staying where they were at birth. People …show more content…
In my essay I focused on the impact being born in wealthy family as opposed to being born in poorer family has on economic opportunity. The reasons why poorer families are unable to climb the economic ladder are due to many things some being less educated, lower status jobs and having single parent households. However with reinvestment in family and some economic help, one day these families will be able to climb the ladder and close the gap in economic