For communities and leaders across the US, increasing upward mobility from poverty is a defining challenge of our times. Data, including on trends, are key to understanding what it will take to ensure all people can thrive.
In June, we updated Urban’s Upward Mobility Data Dashboard, a tool built for state and local leaders to explore the conditions affecting upward mobility from poverty and racial equity in their communities. With each data update, we learn more about the conditions and trends that are affecting upward mobility in communities across the US.
Based on Urban’s Upward Mobility Framework, the dashboard includes 24 predictors and corresponding mobility metrics strongly associated with long-term economic success, power and autonomy, and dignity and belonging. These predictors and metrics are divided across five pillars of support that people need from their communities: rewarding work, high-quality education, opportunity-rich and inclusive neighborhoods, healthy environment and access to good health care, and responsive and just governance.
In our latest dashboard update, we observed three persistent trends that are affecting communities’ efforts to advance upward mobility from poverty:
- Employment is increasing, but fewer jobs provide a living wage.
- More students are graduating from high school, but English language arts (ELA) learning rates continue to decline.
- Deaths from injury have increased over the past decade.
Using these and other data in the dashboard, changemakers can begin to identify policies and practices that will address the biggest issues in their communities.
High employment isn’t enough to expand economic mobility
As the primary source of most people’s incomes, employment is directly related to economic success. And being in the workforce contributes to people’s sense of power and autonomy (another dimension of upward mobility) because they are contributing to the economy and society.
In our most recent analysis of the dashboard’s employment metric, which captures the percentage of adults ages 25 to 54 who are currently working, we found that from 2014 to 2024 the median county-level employment rate increased from 78 to 83 percent. Since 2014 the employment rate has increased in 87 percent of counties (and in 91 percent of counties that had strong or marginal data quality in both 2014 and 2024).
But increasing employment opportunities has not always led to jobs paying living wages, likely because of elevated inflation. The share of jobs offering a living wage trended downward during the same period.
We found that the share of jobs paying living wages decreased in almost all observations, even in counties where the employment rate increased. In other words, employment gains haven’t translated into more livable wages.
The dashboard’s living wage metric captures a more encompassing picture of community affordability than job opportunities or income, by comparing wages with household costs.
Counties can use this metric to assess potential mismatches between wages and the cost of living.
At a time when housing and health care costs are rising faster than household earnings, the living wage metric and others can help policymakers identify targeted interventions to reduce the cost of housing, such as eliminating exclusionary single-family zoning, and expand access to health insurance, such as offering free, public insurance.
More students are graduating from high school, but English language arts learning rates are in decline
Access to high-quality education supports children’s social and cognitive development and can boost their chances of economic success in adulthood. Our recent data update reveals that nationally, two factors connected with high-quality education have improved in recent years: more students are graduating from high school (or receiving a high school degree equivalent, such as a GED) and most communities have improved access to digital technologies (defined as in-home access to a computer and broadband high-speed internet).
But our predictor for effective public education—the average per year change in scores on nationally standardized state assessments for ELA—has declined drastically.
According to the latest available ELA score data, in 2019, ELA learning rates declined in 2,133 of 2,944 reporting counties. In 72.4 percent of counties, students gained less than one grade level in ELA during the school year. By comparison, in 2014, this was the case in only 1,345 counties.
These findings are consistent with other research that shows a “learning recession” started in the US in 2013 (PDF) and continued through the pandemic.
Though ELA test scores are not the only indicator of effective public education, the stark decline in scores points to a potential nationwide issue facing students and schools. Evidence shows improving the quality of schools’ physical infrastructure, including the safety of school buildings, can improve students’ learning outcomes. In addition, overall increases in per pupil spending are correlated with improved long-term economic outcomes for students.
Deaths from injury are widespread and increasing
A healthy environment and access to good health care is crucial to community mobility. One predictor of a healthy environment is the rate of deaths resulting from injuries, which includes planned deaths, such as homicides or suicides, and unplanned deaths, such as from vehicle and other accidents.
Our analysis of the dashboard’s newest data reveals a troubling trend of increasing deaths from trauma from 2014 to 2024. This metric, which measures the number of deaths per 100,000 people in a community that result from injury, has steadily increased in large part because of the United States’ opioid crisis and unsafe roads.
Strikingly, of counties that had data available on this metric in both 2014 and 2024, 91 percent saw an increase in the median rate of deaths resulting from injury.
Trauma exposure, especially among adolescents, can impede upward mobility by subjecting community members to impaired cognitive development and severe emotional and behavioral distress.
State and local policymakers can mitigate deaths from injury through interventions that help families steer children away from paths to potential trauma and treat those currently at risk of trauma, such as substance use treatment programs. Ensuring jobs promote workers’ well-being through paid sick leave programs and predictable scheduling can also improve community members’ safety.
Using data to identify and create paths to upward mobility
Fostering the conditions for upward mobility is important for improving economic success, power and autonomy, and dignity and belonging for future generations.
The Upward Mobility Data Dashboard can help state and local leaders identify where to ask deeper questions, but data are just a starting point. To ensure all residents can thrive, leaders should also engage residents to prioritize investments that meet community needs and expand opportunities.
Let’s help communities build more secure, hopeful futures.
Today’s complex challenges demand smarter solutions. Urban brings decades of expertise to understanding the forces shaping people’s lives and the systems that support them. With rigorous analysis and hands-on guidance, we help leaders across the country design, test, and scale solutions that build pathways for greater opportunity.
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