![]() ![]() Prior to joining Brookings in 2013, he was director of strategy to the UK’s Deputy Prime Minister. His research focuses on social mobility, inequality, and family change. Reeves is a senior fellow in Economic Studies and co-director of the Center on Children and Families. Dream Hoarders shows how American society has become the very class-defined society that earlier Americans rebelled against - and what can be done to restore a more equitable society.ĭream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It, by Richard V. Reeves argues that society can take effective action to reduce opportunity hoarding and thus promote broader opportunity. Upper middle class opportunity hoarding, Reeves argues, results in a less competitive economy as well as a less open society. Examples include zoning laws and schooling, occupational licensing, college application procedures, and the allocation of internships. Various forms of “opportunity hoarding” among the upper middle class make it harder for others to rise up to the top rung. These trends matter because the separation and perpetuation of the upper middle class corrode prospects for more progressive approaches to policy. Upper-middle-class children become upper-middle-class adults. The result is a fracturing of American society along class lines, not just an economic divide. Those at the top of the income ladder are becoming more effective at passing on their status to their children, reducing overall social mobility. Reeves defines the upper middle class as those whose incomes are in the top 20 percent of American society. As Reeves shows, the growing separation between the upper middle class and everyone else can be seen in family structure, neighborhoods, attitudes, and lifestyle. But the more important, and widening, gap in American society is between the upper middle class and everyone else. It’s now conventional wisdom to focus on the excesses of the top 1% - especially the top 0.01% - and how the ultra-rich are hoarding income and wealth while incomes for most other Americans are stagnant. Ellwood, Director of the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy and Isabelle and Scott Black Professor of Political Economy, Harvard Kennedy School.Īmerica is becoming a class-based society Reeves, Senior Fellow in Economic Studies and Co-Director of the Center on Children and Families, Brookings Institution. ![]()
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