The President’s Suspect Statistics We have too little upward mobility, but it has not declined.

NRO ^ | 1/3/12 | Scott Winship

[Nachum]

In early December, in Osawatomie, Kan., President Obama delivered the sort of fiery populist speech his base had been demanding since the start of his administration. The speech as a whole strongly overstated the extent of economic insecurity in today’s America, but one particular claim jumped out at me — that upward mobility has declined rather sharply:

We tell people — we tell our kids — that in this country, even if you’re born with nothing, work hard and you can get into the middle class. . . . And yet, over the last few decades, the rungs on the ladder of opportunity have grown farther and farther apart, and the middle class has shrunk. You know, a few years after World War II, a child who was born into poverty had a slightly better than 50-50 chance of becoming middle class as an adult. By 1980, that chance had fallen to around 40 percent. And if the trend of rising inequality over the last few decades continues, it’s estimated that a child born today will only have a one-in-three chance of making it to the middle class — 33 percent.

This claim of falling upward mobility — of diminished opportunity — rang false to me. The figures were new and of unknown origin, and they contradicted most of the research that has been conducted to date.

[Nachum]

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[frogjerk]

Mr. Horsemeat lies like a rug.

[EagleUSA]

What a joke. This fool makes Clinton sound like an honest man.

[formosa]

Making it up as he goes along...

[TheOldLady]

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[17th Miss Regt]

If the government basis for who is poor increases faster than a fixed measure for moving into the middle class, then his statistics could be true.

But I am fairly certain that the numbers were pulled from his posterior as he usually does in these matters.