Chasing the American Dream by Mark Robert Rank etal. (review)

In the aftermath of the cataclysmic 2016 elections, one thing is clear: the American Dream is in peril. On the topic of how and why, however, there is considerable disagreement. Though published in 2014, Rank and his colleagues have written a book that is more relevant now than ever, precisely because it explains the main pillars of the American Dream, the paths to achieving it, the principal obstacles blocking people, and which policies might dislodge those obstacles. Truly, Rank and his colleagues want to make America great again.

Chasing the American Dream begins inductively, introducing a series of troubling trends that have characterized the US economy over the past four decades. Then Rank et al. turn to part one of the book—the Dreams—that explores three essential elements of the American Dream: freedom, economic security, and optimism. This book's foundation is the life history interviews of seventy-five people: baseball players, federal judges, engineers, CEOs, homeless people, musicians, the unemployed, and the fabulously wealthy. Their life histories—supplemented by a range of quantitative data—help answer a key question: "To what extent are we able to shape our lives and well-being with our own hands?" (p. 10). The answer, it turns out, is complicated.

We learn of the global forces that are depressing wages, diminishing job security, eroding benefits, and eliminating jobs altogether. Together, they are striking at the heart of the economic security that is supposed to follow the efforts of millions of people who work hard every day. None of these "facts" will be new to professional sociologists, but the authors render these facts through the lived experiences of people like Jim, who lost his job at Chrysler and now struggles to provide lunch money for his children. Or through Cindy, whose housing foreclosure was precipitated by an injury that left her unable to work, compounded by the cessation of child support payments from her ex-husband and exacerbated by caring for her ill and elderly mother. If you're feeling depressed just thinking about it, Rank et al. provide a glimmer of hope, documenting the optimism that still characterizes America, even against the odds. It is this optimism that prompts Willie—a sixty-year-old African American homeless man—to pursue his undergraduate degree online. Or what inspires Jim—who we already learned lost his job—to take out a $2,000 loan to buy a silver trumpet for his son, thus allowing his son to pursue his own American Dream.

Part two of the book sorely tests that optimism. Through a combination of national-level statistics and individual stories, we learn how the landscape of job opportunity has changed, fundamentally altering the path to the American Dream. Using musical chairs as an analogy, we learn of the decline of good jobs, even as the labor pool grows. Against the backdrop of these disturbing economic trends, though, the authors share national surveys indicating that a majority of Americans still believe the rags-to-riches story is possible in America, and it may well happen to them. While sociologists might be quick to dismiss this optimism, after discussing different forms of mobility—relative, absolute, and life course—the authors provide an encouraging statistic: "At some point between the ages of 25 and 60, over three quarters of the population will find themselves in the top 20 percent of the income distribution" (p. 105). Conversely—or perhaps dialectically—"nearly two-thirds of the population will experience at least one year of an annual income loss greater than $50,000" (p. 106). This life-course perspective on economic mobility is an important antidote to the sometimes misleading statistics that capture economic well-being in a single, static snapshot.

The chapter on cumulative inequality interrogates the notion of equality of opportunity, suggesting that we should not be too sanguine knowing that a significant percentage of the country "makes it," at least for a while. The focus turns...