Scott Sumner writes amazing stuff at Econlog. I eagrely await the daily digest from that blog every day to read his blog posts.
In a recent post, "The (white) kids are alright," Sumner reproduces some tables from a Brookings study on social mobility. I have no idea how social stati are measured in this or any other study (apparently only by income in at least one of these two charts), but the differences in mobility that show up are revealing of the socio-economic problems in the US.
As Sumner points out, the social mobility of whites in the US has been quite fluid. It is difficult to make a big case about inequality when there is this much mobility between the quintiles.
But the social mobility of blacks in the US has been considerably less fluid (see the chart below)
First, there are extremely few blacks born into the upper decile (so few the data weren't reported!).
And second, blacks seem to have been far less mobile than whites. Those born into the lower quintiles were much less likely to move up to higher quintiles.
These differences seem like cause for concern, at least to me. And yet, I have no idea what to do about them. I am dismayed by the high number of teen pregnancies among people in lower quintiles, regardless of whether they are black or white. But implementing programmes that would discourage them while at the same time trying to maintain some semblance of a caring social safety net does not seem easy.