Earlier in the summer the Queen City received some good news: We’re no longer in last place when it comes to upward mobility.
Charlotte moved up a dozen spots to 38th among U.S. cities for upward mobility in an updated national ranking that first rocked the city a decade ago, when Charlotte ranked dead last.
In July, Opportunity Insights, led by Harvard economist Raj Chetty, published "Changing Opportunity: Sociological Mechanisms Underlying Growing Class Gaps and Shrinking Race Gaps in Economic Mobility" 10 years after the original study ranked Charlotte 50th of out 50.
The rankings are based on the ability of children from low-income families to rise up the income ladder. The study noted that Mecklenburg County was the only county where low-income white children showed no decline in economic mobility over time.
On the next Charlotte Talks, we sit down with the person behind the study — Raj Chetty. We’ll also be joined by Sherri Chisholm, the executive director of Leading on Opportunity, the organization tasked with improving Charlotte’s upward and economic mobility.
We’ll dive into what this updated ranking means for the city, implications for the future, and learn more about how the study was conducted.
GUESTS:
Raj Chetty, professor of economics at Harvard University and the director of Opportunity Insights
Sherri Chisholm, executive director of Leading on Opportunity
