Is the American Dream still possible? In this episode, we’ll talk with leading American political scientist Robert Putnam about why he thinks the American Dream is in crisis. In his most recent work, Putnam examines our nation’s growing income inequality and opportunity gap compared to the 1950s when he was a kid in an Ohio town along Lake Erie. Putnam is a political scientist at Harvard University and the author of the best-seller, “Bowling Alone.”

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Interview Highlights:

Robert Putnam is a political scientist at Harvard University. His latest book, “Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis” touches on many of the issues we’ve covered on Grapple so far.

On the American Dream:

“The fundamental equality of all of us and the fact that how well you do in life should depend on you and your own native talents and your own hard work, but should not depend on what your parents did or didn’t do. That core idea has been the guiding thread of American public philosophy for more than 200 years. And the question is: is that any longer true?”

And how optimistic are Americans today about upward mobility?

“They’re more optimistic than they should be, but they’re less optimistic than they use to be. Americans have historically over-perceived how easy it is actually to climb the ladder. But they are now less optimistic than they were five, 10, 15 or 20 years ago about the chances for upward mobility and they are absolutely right.”

Three big changes that have occurred since the decline of manufacturing:

“Change number one: a growing income gap between rich families and poor families in America. People in the more affluent part of our society and economy have done just great over the last 30 or 40 years … But people from the median income down effectively haven’t had a real raise in 20 or 30 years. And that meant there is this growing gap between what’s financially available to affluent families, well-educated families and what’s available to poor families.”

“The second, less well known, but probably just as important is that there has been growing segregation of American society; so that increasingly rich families are living only around other rich families. I say rich, I don’t mean Bill Gates. I’m talking about people with a college education. So the upper third of American society or affluent Americans are increasingly living in enclaves with other affluent educated Americans. And at the other end, increasingly less educated — high school educated people — again, I’m not talking about the poorest of the poor. I’m talking about what we use to call the working class. They’re increasingly concentrated in poor enclaves. And that has huge effects. It affects the kind of schools kids go to. Rich kids are increasingly concentrated in schools with other rich kids. And those schools are very successful schools. And poor kids are increasingly concentrated in poor schools — in schools with other poor kids. And those schools are not only low-income but they are also lower performing.”

“And the third big change is that there was what I call social capital: strong sense of community, ties. Families were strong and they helped one another. And across America that kind of social connectedness and family and community bonds has rampantly deteriorated in poor communities. In large part because of the economic disaster, and it has not deteriorated in affluent communities.”

On national politics getting in the way of giving kids a fair shot at the American Dream:

“In a well-functioning political system, it’s exactly the kind of problem that you can sit down around a table and have Republicans and Democrats say, ‘Well, we all agree that all of these kids ought to have a fair chance and I think we ought to do x and somebody else says I think we ought to do y.’ And so you end up with a compromise … At the moment in national politics, that’s not where we are. We’re not in a world, politically, in which you can imagine reasonable people sitting down around a table in some Congressional committee room and working out a deal that would begin to address the problem seriously. And until we get to that kind of a national politics, in which people are focused on solving the problem of kids and not just on political slogans — I think it’s going to be hard to solve the problem nationally despite the rhetoric about working hard and playing by the rules.”  

Listen to the previous episode: Scranton, A City That’s Seen Many Come and Go

Credits

Music: Tony Trov and Mike Vivas
Executive Producer: Stephanie Marudas
Host, Editor: Naomi Starobin