by Patrick Appel
Scott Winship explores it:
As I have argued in the pages of National Review, the U.S. is singularly ineffective at lifting poor children into the middle class as adults (poor boys, actually—we are as effective as other nations at lifting up poor girls). If you are reading this, chances are good that you are in the top two-fifths of the income distribution or can expect to be there at age forty. Just 17 percent of kids raised in the bottom fifth will make it there. Based on historical patterns, your own kids will have a 60 percent chance of doing so if they start out in the top two fifths.
The Dish 