##le to the top quintile is 7. 5 percent in the united states, as compared to 11. 7 percent in denmark and 13. 5 percent in canada – two countries with relatively high levels of intergenerational mobility. 3 so effectively the chance of achieving the american dream is not the highest for children born in america. importantly, chetty finds even more significant variation in intergenerational mobility across different metro and rural areas within the united states. 4 while some regions in the u. s. match the highest mobility levels among developed countries, others persistently offer less mobility than in most other developed countries. relative income mobility is highest in the mountain west and the rural midwest and lowest in the southeast. now these differences could be caused by the experience of living in different neighborhoods, but they may also simply reflect differences in the people living in these neighborhoods. in an effort to distinguish between these two possible explanations, chetty and fellow economists study children from families who changed their neighborhood during childhood and provide evidence that much of the variation in upward mobility reflects the experience of living in particular neighborhoods. their findings imply that upward mobility depends strongly on where you grow up as a child. this research indicates that it is the places themselves, rather than the families who live there, that affect the outcomes for children. an important question is what specific features of neighborhoods are associated with greater upward mobility. chetty and co - authors find that higher upward mobility is associated with areas that are less residentially segregated by race or income, have lower income inequality ( i. e. a bigger middle class ), higher quality schools, 5 stronger social networks, higher community involvement and stable family structures. the finding that intergenerational mobility is primarily a local problem has two broad policy implications. the first is the need for place - based policies to invest more in at - risk communities to improve their childhood environments. the second is to facilitate families to be able to move into areas with better childhood environments. piketty and saez ( 2003 ) and chetty, et al. ( 2014 ). chetty, et al. ( 2014 ). chetty and hendren ( 2015 ), chetty, et al. ( 2014 ). measured by income - adjusted test scores, drop - out rates, average class size and per - pupil spending. bis central bankers ’ speeches with respect to the first, i would initially like to talk about the importance of schools ― and in particular, strong public education. consistent

factors. 4 a potential explanation is that individual home buyers often falsely indicated on their mortgage applications that the property they were buying would be their primary residence. using an extensive set of data on loan performance that we have developed with equifax, we find that multiple first mortgage lien holders – that is, people owning more than one home – account for about 40 percent of the dollar volume of seriously delinquent mortgage balances, up from about 5 percent in 2004 ( chart 10 ). there are a few caveats to note about this trend. first, there are several categories of spending by households that are lumped into the personal consumption expenditures category in our official gdp statistics that can fairly be counted as investment. these include spending on consumer durable goods, education, and, possibly, medical care, and their combined share of total personal consumption expenditures ( pce ) rose over the period in which the saving rate declined. second, other forces were at work to push down the personal saving rate. prominent among these is a secular decline in the share of health care expenditures paid out - ofpocket by consumers, lessening the motivation for precautionary savings. haughwout, andrew, richard peach, and joe tracy. 2008. “ juvenile delinquent mortgages : bad credit or bad economy. ”, journal of urban economics, 64, no. 2 ( september ) : 246 – 57. as delinquency and foreclosure rates rose, structured finance products backed by riskier mortgage loans performed particularly poorly. the securitization market for non - conforming mortgages collapsed. credit availability tightened as underwriting practices became much more restrictive, even for plain vanilla mortgages. the cascading effect of the sharp increase in mortgage delinquencies and the resulting steep decline in the market value of mortgage assets was a key contributing factor to the financial crisis. as the financial crisis intensified and the economic outlook deteriorated, equity prices eventually declined by 50 percent from their late 2007 peak before bottoming out about one year ago. but while the value of real estate and equities plunged, the debt incurred to acquire those assets remained, leaving households very highly leveraged. according to the flow of funds accounts, the ratio of household liabilities to net worth rose from around 20 percent to nearly 30 percent in just three years ( chart 11 ). the result was a sharp decline in desired investment relative to saving. the number of housing starts plunged, commercial real