Seeing how the median income of the lowest quintile changes over time does not show how any individual family moves up or down the income ladder over the years. We cannot be sure that the same people that were poor in 1970 or 1980 are still poor today. A major focus of the Schmidtz article is the debate between Cox and Alm and Weinstein whether once poor, always poor. After reading the article, students should try to identify each side of the debate. However, Weinstein maintains that about three-fifths of young, poor children remain in poor households.
Economists love to use numbers to prove their points of view.
It often happens that in discussing contentious subjects, like poverty, economists on both sides will support their arguments with apparently contradictory statistics. It turns out that the facts of the case are a lot harder to pin down than it would at first appear. Ask students what arguments and statistics each side of the economic mobility debate uses to support their viewpoints. Cox and Alm refer to a Federal Reserve Study of families over 17 years. However, Gottschalk and Danzinger are looking at young children in families over 10 years.