Prepared by: Andrew Sum Walter McHugh Jacqui Motroni Sheila Palma. Center for Labor Market Studies Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts

Transcription

1 High School Graduation Outcomes and College Enrollment Plans of Class of 2009 High School Students by Gender in The City of Boston and Selected Large Urban and Affluent School Districts Across the State of Massachusetts Prepared by: Andrew Sum Walter McHugh Jacqui Motroni Sheila Palma Center for Labor Market Studies Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts Prepared for: The Boston Foundation Boston, Massachusetts March 2012 Research Project on the College Enrollment, Persistence and Graduation Experiences of Boston High School Graduates Research Paper No. 1 CENTER FOR LABOR MARKET STUDIES Northeastern University 1

2 Table of Contents Introduction...1 On-Time High School Graduation Rates for Class of 2009 Students in Large Urban and Affluent School Districts...2 College Enrollment Plans of High School Graduates from the Class of Combing the Findings on High School Graduation Rates, College Attendance Plans, and Planned Enrollment in Four Year Colleges and Universities...12 Comparisons of Gender Disparities in Key Educational Outcomes Across the State, the Affluent School Districts, and Large Urban School Districts, Class of Addressing the Large Gender Disparities: Why We Should Care...17

3 Introduction Tracking the success of high schools in having their students graduate from high school on-time and being prepared to enter into college and the world of work is dependent upon both timely and reliable information on the high school graduation rates of their students and their early college enrollment and persistence experiences. In recent years, the Massachusetts Department of Education has implemented a highly informative data collection methodology that provides estimates of high school graduation rates of students by individual school district and by selected demographic / socioeconomic subgroups within districts and has conducted an annual exit survey of the college and work plans of graduates. 1 In Boston, the Private Industry Council in cooperation with the Boston Public Schools has conducted an annual follow-up survey of all new high school graduates from Boston public high schools for more than two decades. The survey is conducted in the calendar year following graduation from high school and tracks the actual college and employment experiences of these new high school graduates in the early spring of the year following graduation. With the research assistance of the Center for Labor Market Studies, the follow-up data also are supplemented with longer term data on the college enrollment, persistence, and graduation activities of graduates using data from the National Student Clearinghouse. The state of Massachusetts also has begun using the Clearinghouse data to track the actual college enrollment and persistence activities of high school graduates by individual school district. In a series of previous research reports on the high school graduation, college attendance, persistence, and graduation rates of Boston public school students, we have found large and sometimes growing gender disparities in high school graduation rates, college enrollment rates, especially four year college enrollment rates, college persistence rates, and college graduation rates. For the Class of 2000, we found 145 female college graduates for every 100 male graduates eight years after graduation. 2 For the Class of 2003, there were 187 female college graduates for every 100 males seven years after high school graduation. These gender disparities 1 In recent years, the Massachusetts Department of Education also has worked in collaboration with the National Student Clearinghouse to generate estimates of the college enrollment behavior of state public school graduates in the early years following graduation. 2 See: Center for Labor Market Studies, Northeastern University, Getting to the Finish Line: College Enrollment and Graduation, Prepared for Boston Private Industry Council and Boston Public Schools, November

4 often varied by race-ethnic group with particularly large gaps in Bachelor degree attainment rates for Black and Hispanic graduates with ratios of women to men in the 250 to 300 per 100 range. Earlier findings on college enrollments for graduates from the Class of 2008 and 2009 have shown similar-sized gender disparities. This research report is designed to put the findings for the Boston public schools into perspective by comparing them to those for other large public school districts across the state, ten affluent school districts, and the state as a whole. Our findings are based on the on-time high school graduation experiences of public school students from the Class of 2009 and their college plans upon graduation from high school as revealed by the Exit surveys. 3 The college plans include whether they expected to attend a two or four year college upon graduation from high school and whether the college was a four year college or university. We will combine the findings of these three outcomes to produce estimates of the share of incoming ninth grade freshmen from the Class of 2009 in each school district who will graduate from high school on-time, plan to attend a college in the fall, and enroll in a four year college or university. 4 On-Time High School Graduation Rates for Class of 2009 Students in Large Urban and Affluent School Districts The estimates of four year on-time, high school graduation rates for the Class of 2009 in the ten large urban and ten affluent school districts by gender are displayed in Table 1. The ten large urban districts include 9 cities that were previously classified as the central city for metropolitan areas of the state in earlier time periods. The city of Holyoke was added to the list. The ten affluent school districts had median family incomes in 2000 that ranged from $97,000 to $181,000 (Weston) with an unweighted median of $121,400 that was 3.1* as high as median family income in the ten large urban districts in that same year. 3 For example, See: (i) Andrew Sum, Jacqui Motroni, Ishwar Khatiwada, and Sheila Palma, Gender Disparities in High School Graduation Rates and Early College Enrollment Behavior of Boston Public School Graduates from the Class of 2008: Implications for Future Educational Policy, Report Prepared for the Boston Private Industry Council, Boston, June 2010; (ii) Center for Labor Market Studies, Northeastern University, Getting to the Finish Line: College Enrollment and Graduation, Prepared for Boston Private Industry Council and Boston Public Schools, Boston, November The data for city of Boston public school graduates in this table as well as Tables 3 and 4 are based on actual college enrollment behavior in the first year following graduation from the follow-up survey rather than planned data from the Exit Surveys. High non-response rates to the 2009 exit surveys, especially from high schools with low college attendance, led to some upward biases in the college plans based on the sample of respondents from the exit surveys. 2

5 Statewide, the on-time high school graduation rates for women and men from the Class of 2009 were 84.6% and 78.6%, respectively. In the ten large urban school districts, the average on-time graduation rate of women was only 66.7%, 5 ranging from lows of 52% in Holyoke and 55% in Lawrence to highs of 75% in Worcester and Pittsfield and 77% in Brockton (Table 1). Among female students in the ten affluent school districts, all of the on-time graduation rates were in the per cent range with an average on-time graduation rate of 96.4%, nearly 30 percentage points above that of the women in the ten large urban districts. The on-time graduation rates of males in the ten large urban districts were consistently below those of their female counterparts. On average, only 56% of male high school students in the large urban districts graduated on-time. The gender gap in high school graduation rates was 10 percentage points. Males in the 10 large urban school districts substantially lagged behind the graduation rates of their male peers in the ten affluent school districts (56% vs. 94%), a gap of nearly 38 full percentage points. Chart 1 displays the variations in on-time graduation rates for males in four low performing urban school districts and four high performing affluent school districts. The on-time graduation rates range from lows of 41% in Lawrence and 45% in Holyoke to highs of 96 to 97 per cent in Weston and Medfield. These high schools are leagues apart in their graduation rates for males. 5 The averages are unweighted means for the ten school districts. Each district receives the same weight in deriving the mean value. 3

6 Table 1: Four Year High School Graduation Rates for Female and Male Students in Selected Large Urban and Affluent School Districts, Class of 2009 (A) (B) (C) (D) School District Female Graduation Rate (in %) Male Graduation Rate (in %) Female Male (in Percentage Points) Female / Male Large Urban Boston Brockton Fall River Holyoke Lawrence Lowell New Bedford Pittsfield Springfield Worcester Unweighted Average Affluent School District Acton Boxborough Brookline Concord / Carlisle Lexington Lincoln Sudbury Medfield Newton Wellesley Weston Westwood Unweighted Average While gender gaps in graduation rates also existed in nine of the ten affluent school districts, they were considerably smaller than those prevailing in the large urban districts. The gender gap between the average graduation rates of women and men in the ten affluent school districts was only 2.2 percentage points versus a gender gap of 10 percentage points in the ten large urban districts. 4

7 Percentage Points Per Cent Chart 1: Variations in Four Year High School Graduation Rates of Males in Selected Large Urban and Affluent School Districts, Class of Lawrence Holyoke Springfield Boston Westwood Weston Medfield School District Chart 2: Average Gender Disparity in On-time High School Graduation Rates in Large Urban and Affluent School Districts, Class of 2009 (in Percentage Points) Affluent Districts Large Urban Districts 5

8 College Enrollment Plans of High School Graduates from the Class of 2009 The exit surveys for Class of 2009 graduates and the findings of the Spring 2010 followup surveys for Boston public school graduates from the Class of 2009 were used to estimate planned college enrollment rates for the graduates in the large urban and affluent school districts by gender (Table 2). The college enrollment rate only captures enrollment in a two or four year college or university. It excludes enrollment in non-degree granting, post-secondary training institutions. All colleges and universities are included regardless of their physical location in the state, country, or outside the nation. Table 2: Per Cent of Class of 2009 High School Graduates Planning to Attend College in the Fall by Gender in Selected Large Urban and Affluent School Districts (A) (B) (C) (D) School District Female Graduates Male Graduates Female Male Female / Male Large Urban Boston 79.5* 69.0* Brockton Fall River Holyoke Lawrence Lowell New Bedford Pittsfield Springfield Worcester Unweighted Average Affluent School District Acton Boxborough Brookline Concord / Carlisle Lexington Lincoln Sudbury Medfield Newton Wellesley Weston Westwood Unweighted Average

9 Among female graduates from the Class of 2009 in the ten large urban districts, 7 of every 8 graduates planned to attend college in the fall, with these planned enrollment rates ranging from a low of 73% in Fall River to highs of 91% or more in Brockton, Lowell and Springfield. In the ten affluent school districts, the planned college enrollment rates of women averaged slightly over 97%, and they equaled or exceeded 95% in each individual school district. Males in the ten large public school districts were the least likely to plan to attend college. Overall, the average college enrollment rate was only 77% for these male graduates. The college enrollment rates ranged from lows of 62% in Fall River and 69% in Boston to highs of 81% to 88% in four other cities including Brockton and Holyoke. Males in the ten affluent school districts were considerably more likely than their peers in the large urban districts to plan to attend college (94% vs. 77%). In each of the ten affluent school districts, 90 percent or more of the male graduates form the Class of 2009 planned to enroll in college. The high degree of variability in planned college enrollment across males in the ten large urban and affluent school districts is captured by the findings in Chart 3. These planned college enrollment rates ranged from lows of 62% in Fall River and 69% in Boston to highs of 95 to 97% in Weston, Concord- Carlisle and Acton-Boxborough. Not one of the ten large urban school districts would have made the top ten list for males in the affluent school districts. There were substantive gender disparities in college enrollment rates in nearly all of the ten large urban school districts. In each of these districts, the college enrollment rate for women exceeded that of men, with the gap in the average college enrollment rates of these two gender groups exceeding 10 percentage points (See Table 2 and Chart 3). While gender gaps in planned college enrollment rates also existed in each of the ten affluent school districts, the size of these gaps was much smaller than those in the large urban districts. The average gender gap for the ten affluent districts was only 3.7 percentage points versus 10 percentage points in the ten large urban districts. 7

10 Percentage Points Per Cent Chart 3: Variations in the Per Cent of Male High School Graduates Planning to Attend College in the Fall Following Graduation in Selected Large Urban and Affluent School Districts, Class of 2009 (in %) School District Chart 4: Average Gender Disparities in Planned College Enrollment Rates of Class of 2009 Graduates in Large Urban and Affluent School Districts (in Percentage Points) Affluent Districts Type of District Large Urban Districts 8

11 The above college enrollment rates included plans to attend two year colleges as well as four year colleges and universities. Earlier research findings for both the city of Boston and the state s large urban and affluent school districts had revealed that women in Boston and most other large urban districts were more likely than men to attend four year colleges and universities upon graduation from high school. Also, there were very large gaps in four year college attendance between graduates of the affluent and large urban school districts. 6 Findings from the exit surveys and Boston PIC follow-up surveys for graduates form the Class of 2009 were analyzed to help estimate the share of college attendees who planned to attend a four year college. Results by gender and type of school district are displayed in Table 3 and Charts 5 and 6. Among planned college attendees, only 59 per cent of the female graduates from the large urban school districts expected to attend a four year college, with the ratios varying from lows of 36 to 37 per cent in Fall River and Holyoke to highs of 71 to 88 per cent in Boston and Lowell. Of those female graduates from the ten affluent districts who planned to attend college, nearly 97% expected to enroll in a four year college. This ratio was nearly 38 percentage points above that of women in the 10 largest urban districts. In each of the ten affluent school districts, 94 per cent or more of the female graduates with college plans expected to enroll in a four year college or university. Again, male graduates from the large urban districts fared least well on this measure of planned educational behavior. On average, only 45% of the male college attendees from the large public school districts expected to attend a four year college or university, with the shares falling as low as per cent in Lawrence, Fall River, and Springfield. In contrast, in the ten affluent school districts, on average, 96% of the male college attendees planned to attend a four year college or university. This ratio was more than twice as high as that for the males graduating from large urban districts (45%). In Chart 5, the range in outcomes on this educational measure for male graduates across the large urban and affluent school district is displayed. At the bottom 6 See: Andrew Sum, Jacqui Motroni, and Ishwar Khatiwada, On-Time High School Graduation and College Enrollment Behavior of High School Students in Massachusetts: The Substantial Degree of Geographic Disparities in Educational Outcomes Across Local School Districts, Center for labor Market Studies, Northeastern University, Boston, July

12 Table 3: Per Cent of Class of 2009 High School Graduates Planning to Attend College in the Fall Who Expect to Attend a Four Year College in Selected Large Urban and Affluent School Districts, by Gender (A) (B) (C) (D) School District Female Graduates Male Graduates Female Male Female / Male Large Urban Boston Brockton Fall River Holyoke Lawrence Lowell New Bedford Pittsfield Springfield Worcester Unweighted Average Affluent School District Acton Boxborough Brookline Concord / Carlisle Lexington Lincoln Sudbury Medfield Newton Wellesley Weston Westwood Unweighted Average

13 Percentage Points Per Cent Chart 5: Per Cent of Male College Attendees Planning to Attend Four Year Colleges and Universities in Selected Large Urban and Affluent School Districts, Class of Lawrence Springfield Fall River Weston Wellesley Medfield School District Chart 6: Average Gender Disparities in Per Cent of College Attendees Expecting to Attend Four Year College and Universities by Type of District (In Percentage Points) Affluent Districts Type of District Large Urban Districts 11

14 of the distribution are the 28 to 35 per cent ratios for male graduates from Lawrence, Springfield, and Fall River versus the highs of 98% for Weston, Wellesley, and Medfield. Recent national research has shown that over the past few decades the family income and wealth of recent high school graduates has become a more important determinant of their probability of attending college upon graduation from high school. 7 Gender disparities in four year college attendance plans were substantially higher in the large urban districts than in the 10 affluent districts. The gender gap between the average planned four year college shares for the large urban districts was 14 percentage points versus less than 1 percentage point for the ten affluent districts. Gender gaps were as high as 30 to 45 percentage points in three of the large urban districts, and five districts were characterized by double-digit gender gaps. In contrast, in the 10 affluent districts, four had a modest gender gap in favor of males, and in the other six districts, the gender gap was only in the one to two percentage point range. Combing the Findings on High School Graduation Rates, College Attendance Plans, and Planned Enrollment in Four Year Colleges and Universities The above results on high school graduation rates, planned college enrollment rates, and expectations on attending a four year college or university can be combined to produce a set of estimates of the share of incoming ninth graders in a given school district who would simultaneously meet three criteria: graduate from high school on-time, plan to attend college upon graduation, and expect to enroll in a four year college or university. The share of ninth graders who meet each of these criteria can be estimated by multiplying the above three variables by each other. Per Cent of Ninth Graders Who Will Graduate from High School On-Time and Plan to Attend a Four Year College, Class of 2009 = On-Time Graduation Rate * Per Cent 8 of Graduates Planning to Attend College * Per Cent of College Attendees in a Four Year College or University 7 See: Philippe Belley and Lance Lochner, The Changing Role of Family Income and Ability in Determining Educational Achievement, Journal of Human Capital, Volume 1, Number 1, 2007, pp It should be noted that the estimates of the per cent of graduates planning to attend college are based on all high school graduates from the Class of 2009 not simply those ninth graders who graduated on-time in the Spring of

15 Given the fact that high school students from the affluent school districts were more likely than their peers in the large urban districts to achieve each of these three educational outcomes, one would expect some large differences in these combined outcomes between these sets of schools. Since males in the large urban districts lagged behind their female counterparts on each of these three outcomes, one would also expect them to lag more considerably behind them than their male peers in the affluent school districts. Findings in Table 4 and Charts 7 and 8 below provide evidence on each of these issues. Among female high school students from the Class of 2009 from the large public school districts, on average, only 35 of 100 graduated from high school on-time and planned to attend a four year college or university. These shares ranged from lows of 18 per cent in Fall River and Holyoke to highs of 55 to 59 per cent in Brockton and Lowell. In contrast, nearly 91 of 100 female high school students in the ten affluent school districts would meet each of these three criteria, with the ratios reaching peaks of 95 to 97 per cent in Weston and Westwood. Among male high school students in the ten large urban districts, on average, only 1 of 5 would meet all three of the educational outcomes. These ratios varied across these 10 districts from lows of only 8% in Lawrence and 13% in Fall River to a high of 33% in Lowell. Only 22 of every 100 male ninth graders in the city of Boston met these three criteria. In contrast, in the 10 affluent school districts, slightly more than 84% of the male ninth graders from the Class of 2009 would meet all three of these criteria, more than four times as high as the ratio for the 10 large urban districts. Ranking the results for men in these 20 school districts yields an extraordinary range in performance, varying from lows of 8% in Lawrence and 13 to 14 per cent in Fall River and Springfield to highs of 87 to 89 per cent in Acton, Concord-Carlisle, and Weston. The performances of the top three districts were 11 times as high as that of Lawrence a world apart. Gender gaps in these combined educational outcomes were much higher in the large urban districts (15 percentage points) than in the affluent school districts (4 percentage points). The city of Boston s experience here is in line with that for most of the other large urban school districts (a 16 percentage point gap versus an average gap of 15 percentage points), but they fall well behind the performance of the affluent school districts. The per cent of Boston male ninth graders who will graduate from high school on-time and attend a four year college or university was only one-fourth as high as that for the affluent school districts (21% vs. 84%). 13

16 Table 4: Per Cent of Ninth Graders from the Class of 2009 Who Would Graduate from High School on Time and Plan to Attend a Four Year College or University in the Fall Following Graduation by Gender (A) (B) (C) (D) School District Female Graduates Male Graduates Female Male Female / Male Large Urban Boston Brockton Fall River Holyoke Lawrence Lowell New Bedford Pittsfield Springfield Worcester Unweighted Average Affluent School District Acton Boxborough Brookline Concord / Carlisle Lexington Lincoln Sudbury Medfield Newton Wellesley Weston Westwood Unweighted Average

17 Percentage Points Per Cent Chart 7: Per Cent of Male Ninth Graders Who Would Graduate from High School On Time in 2009 and Expect to Attend a Four Year College or University in Selected School Districts School District Chart 8: Average Gender Disparities in Per Cent of Ninth Graders Who Would Graduate from High School On Time and Plan to Attend a Four Year College or University by Type of School District Affluent Districts Type of District Large Urban Districts 15

18 Comparisons of Gender Disparities in Key Educational Outcomes Across the State, the Affluent School Districts, and Large Urban School Districts, Class of 2009 The findings on the gender disparities in the share of incoming ninth graders who would graduate from high school on-time and plan to attend a four year college in the fall upon graduation for the affluent and large urban school districts can be compared to those for the state as a whole. As noted earlier, on a statewide basis, women were more likely than men to graduate from high school on-time (84.6% vs. 78.6%) and to plan to attend a four year college upon graduation (65% vs. 55%). The ratio of women who would graduate on-time and plan to attend a four year college was 1.28* as high as that of men (See Table 5 and Chart 9). Among the ten affluent school districts, both men and women were much more likely to achieve these two educational outcomes simultaneously than their statewide counterparts and especially those in the large urban school districts. The gender gap in these ten affluent school districts was only 6 percentage points or 8%. Table 5: Comparisons of the Per Cent Share of Ninth Graders from the Class of 2009 Who Would Graduate from High School On Time and Plan to Attend a Four Year College or University Upon Graduation by Gender and Type of School District (A) (B) (C) (D) (E) Gender Statewide Affluent Large Urban Affluent Large Urban Affluent / Large Urban Men * Women * Women / Men

19 Rato of Women to Men Chart 9: Gender Disparities in the Shares of Women and Men Who Would Graduate from High School On-Time and Plan to Attend a Four Year College by Type of Public School District, Class of In contrast, the gender gap was much larger in both absolute and relative terms in the ten large urban school districts, including the city of Boston. The gender gap was 14 percentage points or nearly 70% in these large urban districts. Males in the ten affluent school districts were more than four times as likely to achieve these twin objectives as their counterparts in the large urban districts while the relative gap for women was 2.6 times. The extraordinarily large gaps in male educational attainment between the affluent and large urban districts should be addressed immediately by both state and local educational policymakers, administrators, and chief elected officials. These huge gaps in educational attainment across males in different school districts and the very large gender disparities in large urban districts have a number of very adverse economic, social, and fiscal consequences for the Commonwealth. Addressing the Large Gender Disparities: Why We Should Care The above findings on the below average on-time high school graduation rates and four year college attendance rates of males in the city of Boston and other large urban districts across the state should be viewed with concern for a number of reasons. Male graduates in Boston and other large public school districts who attend college are less likely to graduate than their female Affluent Statewide Large Urban School District 17

20 peers. The gender gaps are especially large among Black and Hispanic graduates in the city of Boston. For the BPS graduating Class of 2008, we earlier estimated that 270 Black women from the Boston public schools would eventually obtain a Bachelor s degree for every 100 Black men within six years of graduating from high school and the ratio would be as high as 334 Hispanic women for every 100 Hispanic men. 9 If left unchecked, the below average rates of high school graduation, college attendance, and college persistence among males in large public school districts, such as Boston, will have a number of long run adverse consequences. The labor market fortunes of Massachusetts males with no high school diploma have deteriorated badly over the past few decades, with steep declines in their employment rates, annual hours of work, and annual earnings. Even male high school graduates with no post-secondary schooling have fared badly with sharp drops in their annual earnings over the past three decades. 10 The deterioration in the real annual earnings of men with no substantive post-secondary schooling has reduced their ability to form independent households, to marry, and to support their children, especially outside of marriage. Far more young men under 30 with no college degree live at home with their parent(s), and father children out of wedlock. A rising fraction (over 70%) of births to young women with no college degree are out of wedlock, placing their children at high risk of poverty/near poverty and economic dependency. The declines in annual earnings and marriage among the less well educated male population and the accompanying improvements in earnings and high rates of marriage among the best educated have led to a rise in income inequality across the state with the top 10 per cent increasing their share of the family incomes while the bottom 50 per cent have lost considerable ground. 11 High and rising levels of income inequality among families with children reduce life chances, especially cognitive skills and educational attainment, among those in the bottom half of the distribution, perpetuating long-term economic inequality. Economic mobility in America has diminished in recent years and remains linked to the family structure in which one was raised, the educational attainment of 9 See: Andrew Sum, Allison Beard, and Ishwar Khatiwada, Gender Disparities in High School Graduation Rates and Early College Enrollment Behavior of Boston Public School Graduates from the Class of 2008: Implications for the Success Boston Initiative, Boston, June Andrew Sum, Ishwar Khatiwada, Mykhaylo Trubskyy, et. al., Recapturing the American Dream: Meeting the Challenges of the Bay State s Lost Decade, Massachusetts Institute for A New Commonwealth, Boston, See: (i) The Boston Foundation, Boston Indicators Project, Boston, 2012; (ii) Andrew Sum, Ishwar Khatiwada, Recapturing the American Dream 18

21 one s parents, and the academic achievement of sons in their adolescent years. Young Black men in the U.S. with limited academic achievement have experienced downward mobility. 12 The lower earnings of less educated men also have a series of adverse fiscal consequences at the national and state level. They (as well as their employers) pay less in payroll taxes, in federal and state income taxes, in state sales taxes and in property taxes. They are more dependent on both cash and in-kind transfers (food stamps, rental subsidies, Medicaid health benefits), and they are substantially more likely to be incarcerated in jail or prison, especially high school dropouts. The more limited educational attainment of these young men, thus, imposes costs on the men themselves, their children, their communities, and society at-large and add to deepening economic and social inequality in our city and state. There is a clear and immediate need to address these educational deficits of young men, especially in Boston and most of the other large public school districts of the state. Current efforts in the Massachusetts legislature to pass legislation to boost dropout prevention and recovery should be supported, including efforts to boost the minimum dropout age to 18. The academic achievement scores of males in the Boston public schools, especially in the non-exam high schools, need to be strengthened. High school students in Boston with strong MCAS reading and math scores are substantially more likely to graduate on-time, to enroll in college upon graduation, to attend four year colleges, and to persist in college through graduation. Programs to boost male students persistence in college, such as the Success Boston Initiative, also need to be strengthened and expanded, with increased recruitment of men. 12 See: Gregory Acs, Downward Mobility from the Middle Class: Waking Up from the American Dream, The Pew Charitable Trusts, Economic Mobility Project, Washington, D.C.,