What Social Science Tells Us About How to Escape Poverty

Researchers actually have a pretty good idea of what the most powerful factor is for helping people escape poverty. And spoiler alert: It may not be what you think.
The U.S. prides itself on the idea of economic mobility: that where you start in life doesn’t determine where you end up. But not everyone’s likelihood for success looks the same. Amongst children born into the poorest 20% of families, as few as 3% end up in the top 20% as adults. By contrast, around 40% of children born into the top 20% end up staying there.
But while we don't have as much economic mobility as we’d like. researchers have found a hack for how to get more of it. In 2022, a team of scholars concluded that the single most important factor in moving people out of poverty was their relationships; specifically, whether they had social ties to people who weren’t in poverty.
Just one problem: these kinds of relationships don’t happen very often - because Americans’ social networks tend to be heavily class-based. The implications, however, are profound: If Americans spend more time getting to know people who aren’t like them, they might just create a better country in the process.
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