In his article “In Climbing Income Ladder, Location Matters,” David Leonhart discusses the various factors that can affect the ability of lower income families and individuals to climb the income ladder to middle or even upper class. He notes that income mobility varies greatly in large cities across the country. A new study showed that climbing the income ladder was much less likely in cities in the Southeast and industrial Midwest, than it was in cities in the Northeast, Great Plains, and West. This variation is not related to the fact that some of these cities have higher than average incomes, as cities with very similar average incomes still had very different mobility rates. The researchers associated with this study identified four
