Essay: Takeaways from Charlotte's new economic mobility ranking
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Charlotte's skyline, from the eighth floor of Novant Health's Presbyterian Medical Center. Photo: Michael Graff/Axios
"Land of opportunity? Not by a long shot."— Charlotte Observer editorial headline, Jan. 26, 2014.
I remember being on the light rail when I read that headline on an old iPad, blasting news that Charlotte was last among all large U.S. cities for economic mobility. The train offered an appropriate setting, with unhoused people sitting next to South End apartment-dwellers sitting next to others in crisp button-downs and ties.
- Now we had confirmation for what many of us who love this city knew but only whispered about, and I recall telling my friend and former boss Rick Thurmond it seemed like the most important issue in Charlotte's modern history.
Why it mattered then, why it matters now, and why it will always matter: A baby born in Charlotte, knowing nothing and owing no debts to this world, had a predetermined life outcome based on their family's financial status. If they're born poor, the study showed, odds were that they'd still be poor when they reached their early 30s.
- It shattered myths and outlier stories of bootstraps pulled up. Yes, it's possible that a child can be loved so much — or, sadly, so little — that they'd possess some blazing motivation to climb out of poverty. But statistically, as a group, they couldn't.
- Not here.
Driving the news: The report Thursday that Charlotte is no longer the absolute worst place in the country is hardly cause for confetti and parades. But it's a sign of a few things:
1. We were trending in the right direction before the 2014 Chetty study came out.
The 2014 ranking looked at the adult incomes of people born in the late 1970s and 1980s, late Gen Xers and very-early Millennials. To be sure, if you see a native Charlottean still struggling in their mid-40s now, they are likely wearing that "50th out of 50" tattoo.
- The new ranking tells us that those born in the early 1990s had a better shot to climb. You might call them Charlotte's "Angels in America" generation.
They were kids when Charlotte leaders fought to continue with production of the Pulitzer-winning play depicting gay life and AIDS, despite threats and protests that drew national attention. It was also around the time the Arts & Science Council adopted a policy to withhold money from organizations that held events at segregated country clubs. And it was when the city started talking seriously about wholesale transportation solutions, even if many of them have never come to fruition.
- What do these things have to do with economic mobility? At minimum, they were symbolic pickaxes to the walls surrounding the affluent and comfortable, and the beginnings of transfers of social capital.
2. The work of the last decade should only continue the trend.
Since 2014, the taxpayer funding of universal pre-K, the mayor's $250 million racial equity initiative, new nonprofits like Road to Hire, and affordable housing donations big and small have all sprouted in the name of mobility.
- They certainly don't solve inequities on their own. But collectively they can only increase the chances that Charlotteans born in the 2010s and 2020s have a wider springboard than previous generations.
3. National politics may be burning, but the most important issues can be addressed as a community.
When we sat down with Leading On Opportunity CEO Sherri Chisholm to discuss the new ranking, kids were top of mind. She has a 3-year-old, and mine are 4 and 1.
- But I couldn't help think of the names of folks who did the work and took the heat immediately after the 2014 ranking published.
- First was Ophelia Garmon-Brown, the initial co-chair of the Opportunity Task Force, who died from cancer in 2021. She would've smiled at this, and she would've echoed Chisholm's words that the work is hardly done.
- And there's James Ford, the former N.C. Teacher of the Year who was the first co-chair of the Leading On Opportunity task force, who now runs a nonprofit. Bank of America executive Andrea Smith, the other initial co-chair with James, now is interim CEO of the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance. Foundation For the Carolinas CEO Michael Marsicano has retired, and FFTC's Brian Collier now is with the Gambrell Foundation.
- They all helped a city built on boosterism face its deeper flaws, knowing that they might not see the results of their efforts in their lifetimes. (Hell, in some ways they were too good at driving the conversation — some Charlotte nonprofit leaders joked privately that if they didn't include "opportunity" in their grant proposals, they wouldn't receive funding.)
I also thought of 2016, two years after the Chetty study's release, and how the protests around the police killing of Keith Lamont Scott made the "Two Charlottes" a national conversation. Our city's leaders past and present responded not with defensiveness but self audits.
- "You ask yourself, 'How as a society did we treat people so badly?'" former Bank of America CEO Hugh McColl, the most influential Charlottean of the 20th century, told me in 2017. "We're guilty as charged."
One final thought bubble: The hallway to the maternity area of Presbyterian hospital has a screen that tracks the number of babies born there that day, the number of babies born that week and year, and the number of babies born since 1979.
I stared at those numbers when each of my sons was born, and wondered about Charlotte's future.
- Each one a life at the starting line. Each one deserving a chance.
- They're why we should care about this study — yesterday, today and tomorrow.