A study titled "The Fading American Dream" found that just 50 percent of children entering the labor force today earn more than their parents.
The economists from Stanford, Harvard and California in part defined the American Dream as children making more than their parents. They found that has dropped from 90 percent born in 1940 to 50 percent for those born in the 1980s.
"Absolute income mobility has fallen across the entire income distribution, with the largest declines for families in the middle class," the economists wrote.
The economists found that the biggest culprit in mobility is the "unequal distribution of economic growth."
"The rise in inequality and the decline in absolute mobility are closely linked," the report read. "Growth is an important driver of absolute mobility, but high levels of absolute mobility require broad-based growth across the income distribution.
"With the current distribution of income, higher GDP growth rates alone are insufficient to restore absolute mobility to the levels experienced by children in the 1940s and 1950s.
"If one wants to revive the 'American Dream' of high rates of absolute mobility, then one must have an interest in growth that is spread more broadly across the income distribution," the economists concluded.
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