The Not-Much-Opportunity Society - NYTimes.com

Nancy Folbre is an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential contender, likes to contrast his vision of an Opportunity Society in which people choose whether to pursue an education or hard work with an Entitlement Society, offered by President Obama, in which government provides every citizen the same or similar rewards.

I?m not sure what Entitlement Society he?s talking about, since after-tax income has grown far more rapidly at the top than elsewhere, and federal taxes and transfers became less redistributive between 1979 and 2007. As far as I can tell, President Obama hasn?t done much to reverse this trend.

But what is even more misleading about Mr. Romney?s vision is its emphasis on grown-ups. Children, after all, can?t simply choose to pursue an education. They are dependent on their parents, their communities and their fellow citizens for the opportunities to do so.

As the University of Chicago economist Gary Becker noted in his classic ?Treatise on the Family? and his colleague James Heckman reiterated in a paper written with Flavio Cunha, children don?t choose their own parents. They don?t choose which country or state they are going to be born in, either, though geography has a huge impact on their life chances.

Public spending aimed at children in low-income families, including programs like Head Start, has garnered substantial political support precisely because it promises to enhance opportunities. Yet the Head Start program has never served more than 60 percent of eligible children in extreme poverty.

Since 2000, state support for early childhood education programs has almost doubled the enrollment of 4-year-olds in prekindergarten programs, to 27 percent from 14 percent. Increases in access, quality and coordination with early years of elementary school would improve both opportunity and outcomes for children.

Yet per-child spending on early childhood education has declined in the last two years, and the phase-out of the American Recovery and Investment Act will almost certainly lead to further cuts.

A recent Urban Institute report projects significant declines in federal spending on education and certain discretionary programs for children. Another shows that federal spending is more directly focused than state and local spending on children in families with incomes less than twice the poverty level. In 2010, about 44 percent of all children were living in such families.

Most of the federal benefits such children received took the form of direct assistance with basic health, nutrition, housing or education. Children in families with higher income received 82 percent of their benefits in the form of tax breaks.

Urban Institute researchers focus on a simple comparison between low-income families and others, because the data available doesn?t make it possible to break out differences among those above 200 percent of the poverty line.

But a new book edited by the economists Greg J. Duncan and Richard Murnane, ?Whither Opportunity,? documents widening disparities in educational outcomes between children in poor and rich families, finding that educational mobility has declined over time.

Alan B. Krueger, chairman of President Obama?s Council of Economic Advisers, recently summarized international evidence that inequality among adults reduces economic mobility among children. As he puts it, ?The fortunes of one?s parents seem to matter increasingly in American society.?

Mr. Romney didn?t inherit his financial wealth. But he enjoyed an affluent upbringing that included the advantage of an excellent education.

He should acknowledge that entitlement isn?t the opposite of opportunity but a necessary ? even if not sufficient ? condition for it.

Source: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/19/the-not-much-opportunity-society/

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