The Opportunity Atlas: Mapping the Childhood Roots of Social Mobility

Raj Chetty, John N. Friedman, Nathaniel Hendren, Maggie R. Jones and Sonya R. Porter

American Economic Review, 2026, vol. 116, issue 1, 1-51

Abstract: We construct a public atlas of mean outcomes in adulthood by childhood census tract. Outcomes vary sharply across neighborhoods: For children whose parents earn $27,000, the standard deviation of mean household income in adulthood is $10,420 across tracts within counties. Only half the variation in outcomes is explained by traditional measures of neighborhood opportunity like poverty rates. Experimental and quasi-experimental estimates indicate 60 percent of the variation in outcomes across neighborhoods is driven by causal effects. We demonstrate how our statistics can be applied to better target policies to improve low-opportunity areas and help families move to affordable high-opportunity areas.

JEL-codes: G51 I32 I38 J12 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20200108 (application/pdf)
https://doi.org/10.3886/E232764V1 (text/html)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/materials/24393 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/materials/24394 (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: The Opportunity Atlas: Mapping the Childhood Roots of Social Mobility (2018)
Working Paper: The Opportunity Atlas: Mapping the Childhood Roots of Social Mobility (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:116:y:2026:i:1:p:1-51

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

DOI: 10.1257/aer.20200108

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review is currently edited by Esther Duflo

More articles in American Economic Review from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().