The American dream is even harder to achieve than we thought

How much money do you make? It may have less to do with how hard you work and a lot to do with how much your father makes, a new study shows.

The idea that anyone can own their own home and do better financially than the previous generation with the right amount of hard work has long been central to Americans’ self-perception. But achieving those goals may be more difficult than previously thought, according to a study released Monday by New York University sociology professor Michael Hout. The research showed that workers in the U.S. are much more likely to remain in the same social class as their parents than workers in other countries.

“Generations of Americans considered the United States to be a land of opportunity,” Hout said. “This research raises some sobering questions about that image.”

The research, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, draws on data from 1994 through 2016 collected by the General Social Survey (GSS), a non-partisan sociological survey created by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago in 1972.

Most children remain in the same socioeconomic tier as their parents, the research showed. Hout’s study gave occupations a socioeconomic score based on income potential ranging from 9 (shoe shiner) to 53 (flight attendant) to 93 (surgeon). Half of the GSS survey respondents whose parents were in the top tier (76 or higher) are still in that tier, while half of those whose parents scored 28 or lower are still in that tier. In other words, people at the top of American society stay at the top and people at the bottom stay at the bottom.

‘Your circumstances at birth — specifically, what your parents do for a living — are an even bigger factor in how far you get in life than we had previously realized.’

“Your circumstances at birth — specifically, what your parents do for a living — are an even bigger factor in how far you get in life than we had previously realized,” Hout said. The effect was most pronounced for families where both parents were bread winners and weakest in families where a mother was the only breadwinner. Father-only breadwinner families were in the middle.

The findings come as pay for top executives continues to climb while the average worker wage remains largely stagnant. In 2017, the average chief executive officer at the 350 largest firms in the U.S. received $18.9 million in compensation, a 17.6% increase over 2016, while the typical worker’s compensation remained flat, rising a mere 0.3% from 2016.

The study found “intergenerational persistence” — the degree to which a worker’s occupation is influenced by that of his or her father — remained unchanged in the 22 years between 1994 and 2016. Still, Americans largely feel it is getting worse. A survey last year by Pew Research Center found that only 37% of Americans believe today’s children will grow up to be better off financially than their parents.

In 2017, some 75% of people said the American Dream is in danger of extinction, according to a survey from fintech startup Hearth, and 18% said it’s already “completely unattainable.”

With this in mind, many Americans are shifting how they view the American dream. In the past, Americans aspired to social mobility and home ownership, but now many workers are downsizing their goals: some 82% of Americans say their “American Dream” is simply financial security for themselves and their family, according to a survey from Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance conducted in early 2018.

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