Charlotte leaders hail progress on economic mobility

CHARLOTTE — Charlotte is making strides in improving economic mobility and reducing systemic income and opportunity gaps between Black and white residents, according to a study released on Friday. Harvard University-affiliated Opportunity Insights conducted the national study, led by a team of economists and based on Census and other government data.

According to the new study — updating a mobility analysis by the same group of experts a decade ago — Charlotte ranks 38th among the 50 largest cities in economic mobility.

It ranked third among metro areas that have improved the most in mobility during the past 10 years. Over that span, children born into the lowest-income households in 1992 in Charlotte had incomes 5% higher at age 27 — in 2019 — than their counterparts born in 1978 did at the same age in 2005. The latter cohort was the focus of the original study. See the data here.

Harvard economist Raj Chetty once again presided over the mobility study.

Few, if any, cities reacted more forcefully than Charlotte to Chetty’s 2014 study. That study determined that children in Charlotte faced the worst odds of escaping poverty in adulthood — ranking 50th out of 50 cities — and spurred a wave of investments and shifts in philanthropy across local government, nonprofits and businesses.

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