Opportunity & Social Mobility

AEI’s opportunity and social mobility scholars research and develop evidence-based policies aimed at expanding opportunity in America, reducing entrenched poverty, increasing upward mobility, closing opportunity gaps facing disadvantaged children, and renewing America’s associational life. Our scholarship spans economic well-being, poverty, income, living standards, early childhood development, education, employment, intergenerational mobility, and social capital trends including deaths of despair and family formation. Throughout, our work is attentive to trade-offs, unintended consequences, the strengths of the market, and the importance of work and family. For more of AEI’s work on opportunity and social mobility, please explore AEI’s Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility.