MR. PAUL BROWNFrom WAMU 88.5 at American University in Washington, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," connecting your community with the world. I'm Paul Brown, sitting in for Kojo. Coming up this hour, with hard work, anyone can get ahead. It's one of our country's founding beliefs and the cornerstone of the American dream. It's a dream that still inspires presidential speeches and draws millions of immigrants to seek a better life in the U.S. But the reality may not live up to that dream.

MR. PAUL BROWNResearch shows that it's harder to move up the economic ladder in the U.S. than in Canada and in many countries in Europe. The research isn't new. But with economic hard times lingering, it's moved front and center in the national conversation about America's future. It's making headlines. It's showing up on magazine covers. And debates about what opportunity means in America today are already shaping the presidential race.

MR. PAUL BROWNWith us to explore the myth and reality behind economic mobility in the U.S., Isabel Sawhill. She's a senior fellow and the economic studies director of Budgeting for National Priorities at the Brooking Institution. She's also the co-director of the Center on Children and Families. Isabel, welcome. Thanks for being with us.

MS. ISABEL SAWHILLThank you.

BROWNAlso with us, Jason DeParle. He is a senior writer with The New York Times, and he's the author of the book the "American Dream." Jason, thanks for coming in.

MR. JASON DEPARLEThanks.

BROWNWe'd love to have you join us. Here's the number to call, 1-800-433-8850. That's 1-800-433-8850. Or you can email us at kojo@wamu.org. Or get in touch with us through our Facebook page or by sending us a tweet, @kojoshow. A couple of questions here: How do you think America compares to other places in terms of opportunity? Have you moved up or down the economic ladder?

BROWNHave you helped someone get ahead? Has someone helped you try to get ahead? Has it worked? What role do you think the issues of economic equality may play in the presidential race? What do you think Americans are more optimistic about, their prospect year or what they've experienced in the past? We'll continue with our conversation. But first, let's go to Jason DeParle.

BROWNAnd, Jason, what have you found in your research about economic mobility? Your book, "American Dream," basically follows the story of some members of a family back several generations. What have you discovered in your reporting?

DEPARLEWell, I think it's important to define what you mean by economic mobility. And there's two kinds of economic mobility that researchers are working on. One is called absolute mobility, and that's a measure of how you do compare to your parents in absolute dollars. Do you make more than your parents did at a similar age? Most Americans do experience upward mobility in terms of absolute mobility because the society is getting richer. Something like four out of five Americans have more money than their parents did at the same age. So America looks pretty good there.

BROWNAnd are we talking about more money in dollar figures or adjusted? In other words, are people actually better off today? Maybe Isabel could help us with that.

SAWHILLMost of the research does adjust for inflation, so, yes, this is whether people are actually better off even after adjusting for rising prices.

BROWNMm hmm. Does that tell us that our country is wealthier? Are we doing better as a nation than we were, say, 40, 50 years ago in the boom years after World War II?

SAWHILLWe are definitely doing better. We have experienced economic growth, the recent recession notwithstanding. We have had a terrible time for -- in recent years because of the financial crisis and the recession that followed. And we're having a hard time even getting back to where we were in 2007. But over the long haul, yes, we are definitely better off.

SAWHILLBut I would make a strong contrast between the early decades following World War II -- the '50s, '60s and, to some extent, the '70s -- when we had reasonably rapid economic growth and it was a broadly shared prosperity in which everyone's income was growing and the more recent period in which the rate of growth has been much slower and which it has not been broadly shared. A very disproportionate amount of all of the growth we've had has gone to people at the very top.

BROWNJason DeParle, you recently wrote a piece in The New York Times that talked about that. To a certain extent, you were saying that people who are doing well continue to do well. Folks who are not doing well are having an ever harder time moving themselves up.

DEPARLERight. So in -- going back to the absolute mobility point, so people have more money generally than their parents, where the concerns rising above on the United States right now is that people are finding it harder to move up in the income distribution relative to their parent. If you started in the bottom fifth, you're more likely to stay in the bottom fifth in the United States than you are in Canada or Western Europe. And that's what really has been a central part of the American myth, that anybody can make it. Moving on up, as the Jeffersons would say, right?

BROWNRight. Yeah.

DEPARLESo that -- it's as old as Benjamin Franklin, as recent as Oprah, but it doesn't seem to be holding true as much as we thought when we compare ourselves to peer nations.

BROWNWhen you have spoken with people who are trying to move up and having a hard time, what have they told you about their experiences? What is keeping them back? Are there any individuals you can think of or stories that really stick in your mind from your reporting about people who just haven't been able to get where they want to get?

DEPARLEWell, the great -- yeah, well, education is the great portal into the upper reaches of the middle class now. And I think that's where you're seeing a lot of the divide, that, in theory, the fact that education is rewarded so much in the marketplace should make for more opportunity because it doesn't matter what your family background is. As long as you can get the degree, as you long as you can get to college, you can rise up.

DEPARLEBut the way I think it's playing out in practice -- and Belle could speak of this -- is that there's a very strong association between your parents' educational background and your own educational achievement so that, rather than being a portal for opportunity, I think, education is becoming the new dividing line.

BROWNIs education as much of a portal for opportunity as it was? In other words, one thing that we've seen is the export of a lot of jobs, and now we're starting to see some of the more skilled technology and software jobs leaving the U.S. At the same time, we're sitting in a building. Everyone needs a home. And it seems that people who are involved in, you know, what at one point might have been thought of as less desirable activities, less desirable professions, such as plumbing and construction and road building are now perhaps going to be in more demand.

BROWNWe have an increasing population. We've had a housing bust, but there will be more demand simply by the -- because population is rising. Will there be more opportunity there than in higher tech ways of making a living, and will that point to a different type of prosperity?

SAWHILLI think education is actually more important than it used to be, and most of the research would confirm that. Some of those middle-skill jobs that you just mentioned do require more education that they used to because -- don't forget that a lot of those professions or occupations now require that you work with technology and that you understand how it works and that you be a problem solver.

SAWHILLSo, if anything, higher levels of educations are more important than ever. At the same time, I would argue, and many people are arguing nowadays, that we need a little more emphasis in the United States on giving people practical skills, more emphasis on career and technical education as opposed to sending everyone to a four-year liberal arts college. So I think we have fallen down in that area -- although our community colleges are quite a distinctive American institution, and they are trying to fill that gap.

BROWNWe'd love to know what your experiences have been. Have you tried to get ahead in the U.S., and how is it going? Let's go to the phones now and hear from Matt in Potomac, Md., if we can. Matt, are you with us? Matt?

MATT...afternoon, actually.

BROWNHey.

MATTHello?

BROWNYes, Matt.

MATTHi.

BROWNCan you hear us?

MATTI can. Can you hear me?

BROWNSure. Yeah, go ahead. I understand that you and some of your friends think that mobility, upward mobility is a thing of the past. Tell us a little more about that.

MATTSure. Well, I'm not a recent college grad. I've been out of college now about seven years. But, you know, my peers and I, under-30 crowd, are very much convinced that the idea that hard work or the idea that education -- and your panel actually just touched on this point -- could actually help someone change his or her social class, we're pretty sure that that's gone.

MATTSome of my friends, we're pretty convinced that, you know, if your parents made it or your grandparents made it and you can inherit that money, fine. But if you really think that just pulling yourself up by the bootstraps is going to change your class, you're sadly mistaken.

BROWNMatt, what makes...

MATTI do think...

BROWNWhat makes you feel that way? What makes you believe that?

MATTI think by the nature of most of the jobs that we were able to secure out of college.

BROWNMm hmm.

MATTYou know, we were kind of sold this idea that going to college and getting our degrees was going to open the doors to tremendous riches. And, you know, most of us ended up in entry-level jobs and are now earning less than we were seven years ago when we graduated. So...

BROWNSo it really hasn't happened for you?

MATTRight.

BROWNYeah.

MATTAnd I'll take my answers (unintelligible) off the air. Thanks so much.

BROWNOK. Thanks a lot, Matt. And we'd love to have your call at 800-433-8850. That's 800-433-8850. Or you can email us at kojo@wamu.org. We'd love to hear from you. Isabel Sawhill, Jason DeParle -- Isabel, what do you think about Matt's comments that he and his friends have tried to move ahead and they just don't see it happening?

SAWHILLWell, there are several aspects of what he said. One of the things he seems to be talking about is to what extent can you move or change social class in America. You know, we like to think of ourselves as a classless society. I once wrote that the word class is just a word we don't use in America. It's almost a stigmatized way of describing people. And yet the reality is that you need to pick your parents well, even in America. If you don't have the right parents, you're not going to do as well. And that's what this new research is basically showing, that your...

BROWNWho are the right parents?

SAWHILLWell, your -- that your parents' income and education, their socioeconomic status, to use the more academic term, has quite a large impact on where you end up, regardless of your own efforts.

BROWNWhat do we know about the factors in that background that affect your chances of doing well? I mean, I hear that parents play a role, active or not. You know, your status as a child will affect your status as an adult. But how? Specifically, what is it that a child would gain in a certain environment that would give that child a better crack at a prosperous adulthood than another kid?

SAWHILLI think if your parents are wealthy and well-educated, they can live in a good neighborhood. They can send you to better schools. If they're wealthy enough, they may even send you to private school. They may include much more than schooling. And your informal education, they may take you on trips. They have attitudes about education. They have connections with the larger world that can be helpful to you. They know who to reach out to if something goes wrong. So there are all these advantages, and they kind of accumulate.

BROWNJason DeParle.

DEPARLEWell, let me say a word about what we know about what keeps people from moving ahead, and one of the things that distinguishes the United States from peer countries is that the lower tier in the United States is in deeper poverty and more distressed than parallel groups in other countries. So in terms of what keeps people from moving ahead, high incarceration rates in low-income neighborhoods that stigmatize the men, remove the men for a period time, stigmatize them in the labor market thereafter.

DEPARLEThe preponderance of single-parent families, which we know is not the ideal way to raise kids. The high violence, there's a thinner safety net, more deep poverty, more material hardship in the United States. What really distinguishes the U.S. -- one of the things that distinguishes the U.S. class structure from those abroad is our bottom is deeper.

BROWNWe'll be back in just a moment. We need to take a brief break, and our phone lines are pretty full, so if you'd like to try us on email at kojo@wamu.org. Folks on the phone, hang with us. We will start to take your calls immediately after this break, and we want to know what you think about how this country compares to others in terms of opportunity. Are you succeeding in getting where you want to be? Are you not? Do you have any ideas about why, about what can be done about it? I'm Paul Brown, sitting in for Kojo. This is "The Kojo Nnamdi Show" on 88.5 WAMU.

BROWNWelcome back. I'm NPR's Paul Brown, sitting in for Kojo Nnamdi today. We're talking with Isabel Sawhill and Jason DeParle about upward mobility and the American dream. We hope you can join us by calling 1-800-433-8850, or a better bet right at the moment with our phone lines quite full, email at kojo@wamu.org. And let's go right to the phone in Arlington, Va. Lauren, glad you can be with us. Lauren, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show."

LAURENThanks.

BROWNSo what's on your mind, Lauren?

LAURENI think that upward mobility is still alive and well in this country, and I think I'm a product of that system. You know, before college and going to college, I was making minimum wage, $3.35 an hour, got my first job out of college making $18,000, lost that job, went back to minimum wage, but, long story short, just kept with it and, you know, made incremental gains. And now I'm in a position where I own several rental properties. I have a job that pays well into six figures. And, you know, I'm not the nouveau riche, but I'm, you know, very comfortable.

LAURENBut -- and also being raised from a family with six siblings, father was a teacher, I mean, we really had nothing. So, I guess, I've kind of learned to appreciate everything I've got, to take advantage of every opportunity. And for the previous caller, Matt, I would just say that, you know, it takes a little patience. It's not something that's going to happen overnight, and you can't necessarily just jump into a job where you're making $100,000 a year.

LAURENYou might have to, you know, maybe make sacrifices here and there, maybe even take a job that's not as good just to get that experience in a resume to get you to where you want to go.

BROWNLauren, would mind telling me what kind of work you're doing? What's your main job? You say you own the rental properties, but you've got another good job. Do you mind telling us what it is?

LAURENRight. Sure, I'm in IT. I got a computer science degree from a small university in Louisiana in 1989. And I've been in IT the entire time.

BROWNWhat do you attribute your success to when so many people say that they're having a hard time moving up the ladder, hard time even getting a job? Do you think there is something that you carry within you that has made you attractive to employers, or simply a good person to have on the job somewhere?

LAURENYou know, I think it could be that. I think that I've always tried to do my best in everything I do. But also in the hard times, I've always had that big family I was telling you about to lean on and to help me and encourage me. I think that that's huge, you know? And also the fact that we didn't have any money, I was able to go to school on Pell Grants, so I took advantage of that opportunity. I think it's all those factors.

BROWNWell, listen, thanks very much for your call. It's good to hear from someone who believes in the American dream and mobility and has lived it. We appreciate hearing from you.

LAURENSure. And I'd like to add that there's also one other route. I saw recently that the guy that invented Bubba Teeth is worth, like, $120 million. So that works, too.

BROWNApparently, it does. We'll have to look for the next one of those, won't we?

LAURENAbsolutely.

BROWNYeah. Take care, Lauren.

LAURENThanks, bye.

BROWNSo what do hear there? Jason DeParle, Isabel Sawhill, is this a typical experience now? Can you really move ahead the way Lauren has? Or is it harder?

SAWHILLI think Lauren's story is very helpful. It illustrates to me two principles. One is that you do have to keep trying hard. You have to work. You have to be persistent, which he seems to have done. He also has found a sector of the economy, IT, where jobs are very available and where there's huge demand, and that's another lesson. He also had help from the government in the form of a Pell Grant.

SAWHILLIn my book with Ron Haskins, which came out in 2009 -- I'm advertising it now. It's called "Creating an Opportunity Society," for anyone who might be interested in learning more about this topic -- we found that if you combined personal responsibility, hard work and persistence, getting an education with some effective government policies, that the marriage of the two was the best approach for a society to take that values upward mobility.

BROWNAt the same time, Jason DeParle, you have written that some research shows, if you start out at the bottom, you're most likely to stay there and vice versa. Tell us a little about that.

DEPARLEWell, just amen to everything Belle said, including the role of the government in giving them a helping hand. The one thing I might add to that story is he also referenced the father being in the home. And in terms of the poorest Americans, I think that's what you would often find missing. Something like close to -- roughly two-thirds of the Americans raised in the bottom two-fifths, the bottom 40 percent, stay there. And roughly two-fifth -- two-thirds of the people raise to top stay there.

DEPARLESo you do see a great amount of mobility in the middle of American society, which sounds like where that last caller, Lauren, was from, an intact family, father was a teacher. You see a lot of people moving around there. That's the kind of...

BROWNThey didn't have a lot. They had six -- there were six kids in the family, but his dad had a good solid job. He was educated.

DEPARLERight. It sounds like he's from that part of almost the mythic America, which we see when -- in the day to that middle sector, there's still a lot of people being able to move up. What you don't see very much is people raised at the top moving down.

BROWNRight.

DEPARLEThey're able to preserve their place in society. And you don't see nearly as much as we thought, and we'd like to see people at the bottom moving up.

SAWHILLIf I could add, Paul, just quickly.

BROWNSure.

SAWHILLThere is a racial dimension to this, which is quite striking and quite disturbing. Even if you are born into a middle-class family, if you're African-American, your chances of moving up are much smaller than if you're white. And your chances of moving down are much greater.

BROWNI want to -- I want to go to the phones again. And let's talk for a moment with Paul, if we could, from Great Falls, Va. And, Paul, I understand -- are you there with us, Paul?

PAULYes, I am.

BROWNGreat. I understand that you're a child of two immigrant parents, and you believe that opportunity is still out there. Tell us a little about your story.

PAULYeah, so my parents both grew up in poverty in South America. I was born here in the States. I'm married to a Native American. I have three young, beautiful daughters. And I don't know if it's a combination of luck, but I went to school, went to graduate school, landed a good job both in technology, myself and my wife. And my belief is for my children, I want to make sure that they are well-schooled and trained. And, you know, quite frankly, when I think about advice, I will give them recommendations to go to law school or something that they might be -- than we are.

BROWNMm hmm. Do you have any questions for our panelists here today?

PAULYeah. My only comment was, from the caller a few callers ago who was under 30, you know, that the perception that it seemed to be almost helpless and futile, you know, my thought is, are the panelists recommending not to go to school, that trying to better yourself is futile? I'm hearing a bit of a mixed message.

BROWNWell, let's go to our panelists and find out. Jason, Isabel, what are you recommending, go to school?

SAWHILLI'm highly recommending that you stay in school as long as you can and get the best education you possibly can and get some very specific skills in the process. I'd also note, relative to this last caller, that we have some evidence that immigrants do find opportunity in America still. The problem with the mobility process is more for people who are native-born Americans.

BROWNOK.

DEPARLEBelle, you know this research better than I do. Absolutely, you would recommend that somebody stay in school. The more education you get, the better. Is there a debate of -- I mean, education is necessary. Is there a debate about the extent to which it's sufficient?

SAWHILLIt's clearly not totally sufficient because, even if you have the best education in the world, there are going to be other factors that matter for your success.

BROWNAnd what are some of those factors?

SAWHILLBut it is true -- if I can just...

BROWNYeah, surely.

SAWHILLIt is true that the more education you have -- for example, if you are a college graduate, and especially if you have a graduate degree, as I think this last caller did, you are going to be the equal of almost anyone. In other words, some of those other factors that play a role for people, for example, who only have a high school education or a little bit of college begin to wash out once you're actually graduated from college or beyond.

BROWNDo we know what some of those success factors are for people who are in the bottom rung of society, economically, as they come up?

SAWHILLWell, we've been emphasizing here what is counter to the American belief system, and that is that, you know, your family background does matter. For all the reasons we discussed earlier now, obviously, there are other things such as the neighborhood you grow up in. Luck makes a difference.

BROWNBut, once again, if you...

SAWHILLYour own efforts make a difference.

BROWNIf -- how big a difference does one's own effort make? For example -- what I'm trying to get to here is, if you are coming up in a family that does not have these advantages, do we know anything about the correlations between success and the individual?

SAWHILLWell, let me give you one set of data that Rick Santorum has been citing, including in the Republican debate just recently. And it comes from my book with Ron Haskins and...

BROWNMm hmm, which, by the way, you can link to at wamu.org.

SAWHILLThank you. It goes as follows: If you do -- and it speaks to the importance of personal responsibility regardless of your family background and other factors, the state of the economy and everything else.

SAWHILLIt says if you graduate at least from high school and hopefully do better than that, if you work full-time, assuming there are jobs available, and if you marry or have a stable, committed relationship before you have children, just do those three things -- we call it playing by the rules -- then your chances of being poor are 2 percent, and your chances of being middle class or better are about 75 percent.

BROWNSo there are some definite correlations from research?

SAWHILLSo your own effort matters, yes.

BROWNYeah. Well, thanks very much, Paul, for calling. And if we could go to Betsy here in Washington, D.C., Betsy, are you there with us?

BETSYYes, I am.

BROWNI understand you're a tutor in the Washington, D.C. public schools. What is your perspective on what we've been discussing here and on what you see as upward mobility?

BETSYWell, I'd like to say first that I also have a background in the -- teaching in private schools. So I've been in D.C. public schools for three years now, and it's (unintelligible). And, you know, the kids are really -- some of them come from just heart-rending situations. And these are really good kids, but the schools are in crisis. My program is a non-profit program, so I'm not paid -- D.C. public schools.

BETSYWe need more tutors. We need more mentors. There are so many students that I meet who need me or people like me. And they're actually coming up to me and saying, how do I get in your tutoring programs? But the money is not there. You do have to pay people. Kids need lots of help. They're getting, you know, some help, but I am literally tutoring kids who are 18 years old -- 17, 18. They're reading and writing on a 6th grade level and below. I'm afraid it's considered kind of normal in one of my schools. So for them...

BROWNJason DeParle -- let's get in Jason DeParle here. I think he's got something to contribute.

DEPARLEYeah, just picking up on that. So Belle has this very arresting statistic, a 2 percent poverty rate...

BROWNAnd stay with us, Betsy, if you could, for a moment.

DEPARLE...a 2 percent poverty rate for people who so-call play by the rules and 75 percent making in the middle class. What I found in spending years with families on welfare in the inner city is just how hard those three things -- staying in school, working full-time, marrying -- can be. I mean, they sound like a simple formula, and they work for so many Americans.

DEPARLEYou know, when you're -- as your caller is saying, when you're growing up in an inner city where your father is in prison, and there's violence surrounding you daily on your way to school, and you're getting kicked out of your house, and you're homeless -- I mean, the level of chaos that interrupts some of these children's lives is hard for people to believe if you haven't experienced it.

BROWNWell, you know, here's an interesting email from Mike in Baltimore, who says, "I think one reason we've seen a decline in opportunity all over is that more Americans, than ever, are single. All the breaks go to married people and families. More single women and men are all operating on their own at the peak of their careers from age 30 to 50 with little or no family or other assistants of any kind than ever in American history." So...

DEPARLEPart of what I heard from Betsy as well -- and I think you hear this from anyone who spent time in the inner city is the sense of great undeveloped and untapped potential. I mean, the kids I met there -- if they weren't succeeding in school, it wasn't because they weren't able to. I mean, these kids are perfectly intelligent, perfectly able to succeed. It's as though the chaos around them conspires to keep that from happening.

BROWNBetsy, when you are able to help someone in a situation that you describe succeed in one of these really tough situations, what do you do? And what do you find is common, if there is a common characteristic, or more than one, in the kids who are able to overcome some of these tremendous setbacks that they experience, just for the get-go, as they're growing up? What's there? What is -- what's the kernel inside the person who will succeed in a situation like that? And what do you do to nurture it?

BETSYI think that the students who succeed have made connection with somebody, whether it's, you know, like me, a tutor or whether it's a teacher, a coach, somebody in the school. And these students will then say to themselves, well, I like hanging around there. I like going to the class. But some of them will pick and choose and say, well, I want to go in and see my tutor, not go to class. Or, you know, so they're kind of picking and choosing. He wants this person or that person.

BETSYSo -- had smaller classes where teachers -- for individual instruction. We also -- (unintelligible) young teachers more -- as an experienced teacher would have a lot of young teachers in these schools who are ascending on their classes because my (unintelligible) are in their classes. And, you know, they don't always know what to do. They don't always know how to grab the kid's attention.

BROWNMm hmm.

BETSYAnd, you know, there needs to be more teacher training. And Teach For America, I think, gives a summer teacher training. It's really not enough. They should be mentoring with someone who has more experience. So this -- and, you know, and also, the schools -- one way I grab kids is -- and all the research shows this is what to do. If you're going to teach reading, you have to start the kids where they are because you cannot say, here's a 12th grade textbook, you're reading on a 4th grade level, do with it what you can.

BETSYThat is just not going to work, and it turns the kids off. If you can take them from where they are, then they're totally willing to come up.

BROWNWell, you know, it sounds -- and I appreciate your calling. We do have to take a break here in a second, but, Betsy, it sounds as though the bottom line that you're describing is personal connection. And these are -- and personal connections are just the things that Jason and Isabel have said are missing often when kids don't succeed as adults, that there's no structure around them. Am I representing that reasonably accurately?

DEPARLELeon Dash, a great Washington Post reporter, wrote a book called "Rosa Lee," about a family -- a very poor African-American family in Washington, D.C., where, I think, there were seven kids. And six of them wound up in severe poverty like their mother, and one succeeded. And the one succeeded had done just what your caller is saying, had made a connection with a mentor.

BROWNYou're listening to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show." I'm Paul Brown, sitting in for Kojo. We'll continue our conversation about upward mobility and the American dream in just a moment. Stay with us.

BROWNWelcome back. I'm NPR's Paul Brown, sitting in for Kojo Nnamdi. I'm talking with Isabel Sawhill and Jason DeParle about upward mobility and the American dream. If you'd like to join us, call 1-800-433-8850, or email us @kojoshow.org. Jason and Isabel, I'd like to ask a little about, as we head into the presidential election season here, what are Republicans and President Obama saying about the American dream, upward mobility, opportunity, education, how to get ahead.

SAWHILLI think that what Romney is saying is that we believe in America, in a merit-based society, that people who get ahead are the people who work hard and get a good education, and that if you do that, you will be rewarded. And he contrasts that with what he calls an entitlement society, in which people become overly dependent on government help. I think that the president is taking a quite different tact. He's saying we have a lot of inequality and a huge increase in inequality in recent decades, the share of income going to the top 1 percent.

SAWHILLThat's people with annual incomes over about $380,000 a year, have about 20 percent of all of the income in our society, and that's at least double what it was a couple of decades ago. And so he's saying, as the rungs on the ladder get further and further apart -- in other words, as inequality increases -- it's getting harder for people to climb that ladder. And, therefore, we are not as much of an opportunity society as we would like and as many Republicans had painted us to be.

BROWNWell, you know, we have someone on the phone, Bredge (sp?) from Alexandria, Va. Bredge, I hope you're here. I understand that you're a child of Haitian parents. You said that your life is very different from your parents', but you don't see the same jump in your students. Tell us a little more about that.

BREDGEYes. So I grew up in Newark, N.J. with my five sisters. And my parents are both immigrants. And my dad was a cab driver. My mom was a home health aide, and so life was a struggle for us. But the overall goal in my family -- and the only reason that our parents came to this country -- was so that our life could look different from theirs. And they drove that into us every single day. And so all of my sisters and I, we all graduated from college, and we all have master's degrees. And we do well. And that is not -- you know, and it's -- of course, I had the stable family. Both parents were there as well.

BROWNMm hmm.

BREDGEBut I don't see that same jump in my students. I don't see that -- they have so many other issues, and schools are not equipped to know how to deal with those things, like...

BROWNWhat sorts of issues, Bredge?

BREDGE(unintelligible) Just, you know, one of the speakers alluded to it, or spoke about, the violence, the income, you know.

BROWNMm hmm.

BREDGEI didn't eat all weekend, and it's Monday. And I'm starving, I'm hungry, and I'm angry, so, you know, I just need to eat lunch. You know, and...

BROWNSo you're saying -- what you're saying is that the type of inequality that Isabel has been describing and that Jason has been describing, that people who have...

BREDGEExactly.

BROWN...have more, but people who have less really don't have anything a lot of the time.

BREDGEYes.

BROWNYeah.

BREDGEAnd a lot of that is that I feel that I graduated with a great sense of (word?). You know, I knew what I was to get at, and I knew what I wanted to do with my life. The students I'm seeing graduating don't know that. You know, they don't have time to even consider or the opportunities to say, you know what, you know, I'm really good at piano. And I want to be a tutor or...

BROWNDo you know where you got that, Bredge? Did that come to, you think, from the family environment you just told us about? Or is this something that you -- that was just part of you? Or is it something that someone at your school, one of the connecting people that Jason was talking about, might have helped you build within yourself? Where did you get that inner crystal that has helped you move forward the way you've described to us?

BREDGEI think it's a combination of parents, but also opportunity. I had the opportunity to try a lot of things and say, this isn't me, you know?

BROWNMm hmm.

BREDGEAnd I had the luxury of doing that. But my students don't have that luxury. You know, my parents work constantly. I never saw them, but they worked hard, so we could go to school in the suburbs versus in the inner-city because they thought it was getting too violent. So once I moved to the suburbs and I saw this, it was like, wow, lacrosse is a sport? I didn't know this, you know.

BREDGEAnd, you know, I can take Italian instead of just Spanish, you know, once a week? I could take Italian every day. So...

BROWNYou know, we've heard Isabel talk about what the various presidential candidates are saying. What would you like to see? What sort of president, for example, would you like to see in terms of education and helping young people be successful? Everyone's talking about the need to increase and improve employment. Everyone is talking in one way or another on the political scene these days about opportunity and how to create it. The question is how to create it.

BROWNWhat would you like to see in the next leader?

BREDGEI think, as far as education, yes, I would like to see them pushing towards -- as far as policies are concerned -- teacher effectiveness, making sure you have the right teachers in the classroom and also those wraparound services, you know, like some of our students need more than the four walls of the classrooms. They need counseling.

BROWNMm hmm.

BREDGESome schools don't even have counselors, you know. And they need other services that they don't even know are available to them. And so, just making the school a bit more holistic versus, you know, we're going to read this book -- like your other caller said -- this 12th grade textbook, and you're reading on a 4th grade level. You know, we need that tutoring. We need that counseling. We need all of those services.

BREDGEAnd we need the right people providing those services. And that's what I would love to see as far as education is concerned, you know, (mumbles).

BROWNWell, Bredge, thank you very much for calling. We really appreciate your perspectives and best of luck to you.

BREDGEThank you. Bye.

BROWNMm hmm. Any reaction to what Bredge has said, Jason DeParle or Isabel Sawhill?

SAWHILLWell, I -- my reaction is that, yes, we do need more wraparound services, yes, the problems do go beyond just learning how to read that textbook, but, you know, we can't also expect schools to do everything. They're just not equipped to. And so I would also want to emphasize that everyone needs a good start in life. And the most important thing to having a good start in life is having good and responsible parents.

SAWHILLAnd no one should bring a child into the world until they're really ready to be a parent. And, unfortunately, we now have a -- I would call it an epidemic of very young adults having children outside of marriage. They are not planned. They just come along. And they're not really ready to take up that responsibility. And that issue is getting more important day -- you know, year by year.

BROWNJason DeParle, is this something that you've seen through your reporting, talking with people?

DEPARLEAbsolutely.

BROWNAnd if so, how?

DEPARLEAbsolutely. Belle took the words out of my mouth. I mean, the first thing I would say in that caller's story is when she said parent, she used the plural. So she -- there were two of them both there involved in her life, it sounded like.

BROWNMm hmm.

DEPARLEYou know, I spent seven years following a group of inner-city families for who were on the welfare system and left for my book "American Dream."

BROWNMm hmm.

DEPARLEAnd if there was one thing I would wish for those families, it was that they could have a stable father in their lives.

BROWNLet's go to the phones here and see if we can talk with Rose in Bethesda, Md. Rose, are you there with us? I understand your husband went back to school and has really done very well, but that it wasn't easy.

ROSEYes. Hi. I've been listening to the discussion, and it's -- you know, the problem seems very complicated. But, for us, my husband -- you know, we are a success story. My husband -- and I'll talk about my -- I met my husband in graduate school. We both came from middle -- in middle class incomes. Right now, I'm a stay-at-home mom, so I'm going to speak about my husband.

ROSEHe went back to college at age 32, and he came from a large family, five children. His father was a fireman, and both parents were not educated. And he was making in the low 30s when I first met him. It was about 15 years ago. And went back to school at 32, got -- finished his bachelor's degree and then went on to get a master's degree. And his salary has jumped four times of what it was. And he makes over six figures.

ROSEAnd he is -- and I attribute that to hard work, choosing good nature, strategically changing jobs, knowing to negotiate for salaries, knowing the market, and we're, you know, in a -- we're doing quite well. And, you know, I attribute it to both he and I 'cause I came from a large family of five girls, a mother and a father who were immigrants. And this innate motivation was that hard work and hard work and...

BROWNIt sounds like hard work, sounds like application.

ROSEIt's -- no, it's in our motivation, you know. I'm sorry. This motivation that we have to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps...

BROWNOkay.

ROSE...that failure is not an option.

BROWNUh huh.

ROSEAnd that's the mentality that we both have.

BROWNWell, Rose, thank you very much for your call. It's a very inspiring call. We appreciate hearing from you. Jason DeParle, Isabel Sawhill, as we get close to the end of the hour here, how much stock can we put in that? How much can people depend on simple motivation and plain old hard work in today's America? Is the deck of cards stacked against the average person more or less today than it was, no matter how hard you may work? That's kind of in the bottom line on this discussion. How do we compare to the way things were? Is upward mobility alive and well, or is it gone?

SAWHILLI'd have to say the glass if half-empty and half-full.

BROWNMm hmm.

SAWHILLI think, on the one hand, this inspiring story we just heard is absolutely true, and Americans still believe in it. And one of the strengths of American society and of our citizens and the immigrants that come here is that they do strive and they do persist and they do succeed. On the other hand, we have a degree of inequality in our society now, which is pretty much unprecedented. You'd have to go back to the late 1920s to find anything like it. And I think that's creating a problem, especially for people at the bottom.

SAWHILLThey're having a terrible time trying to climb out of poverty.

BROWNWell, yeah, we just got a tweet. It says, "Are we pretending extreme class stratification is not a historic and worsening reality in America?"

DEPARLEI think class is always -- there's obviously always been class in America, but I think there's ample evidence that inequality's grown, just as Belle said.

BROWNMm hmm. Do you, either one of you, have any perspective on whether men or women are finding it easier to move along? We have an email from Karen that says, "Have your guests found differences between men and women's perspectives on their ability to move up the socioeconomic scale? My instinct is that men feel less mobile compared with their father's experiences while women's prospects look better compared to their mother's."

SAWHILLThe caller is absolutely right. There is quite a big difference between men and women. If you look at men in their 30s now and compare them to their father's generation when they were in their 30s, their earnings are actually, in inflation-adjusted terms, lower than their fathers -- than in their father's generation.

BROWNMm hmm.

SAWHILLBut if you look at women, women have made huge gains. Their incomes and earnings and education have all gone up by a lot. Women are now going to college and graduating from college in greater numbers than men. And younger women are beginning to compete quite effectively with young men in the labor market.

BROWNSo it sounds as though the American dream is still there. Upward mobility exists. It may be somewhat harder to achieve it than it has been, according to research. I mean, we're not looking at opinion here. We're looking at facts and figures. Who's likely to stay where they are? Who isn't?

DEPARLEWell, you -- and you also reach it by a different path. Hard -- you asked earlier on, is hard work enough of a path as it used to be? It depends of whether you're thinking about the hard work as terms of manual labor.

BROWNMm hmm.

DEPARLEIf that's the case, it isn't as much of a path as it used to be. If you're thinking of hard work as long hours in the library, then, yes, there still is a -- the evidence would show that there's still a viable path to upward mobility.

BROWNHow do you feel about people's chances going forward? We've got a tough situation with the economy right now. Any predictions as far as -- as where things will go from here for young people entering the workplace and for people who have been working for a while and are trying to move up and find it difficult? Do we look ahead to more stratification? Or is there a chance at perhaps more opportunity and a little bit easier time getting where you want to go?

SAWHILLI'm really glad you raised that question because we've not said much about it so far. The high rates of unemployment and the slow growth economy are clearly going to constrain opportunity for almost everyone, but especially for the young.

BROWNThanks very much, Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution, Jason DeParle of The New York Times. I'm Paul Brown, sitting in for Kojo on "The Kojo Nnamdi Show" on WAMU. Thanks so much for listening.