"The American Dream" - the phrase that is known worldwide. It offers the promise that anybody who works hard can achieve his or her goals and enjoy financial success in the United States.
In a recent fundraising letter, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush talked about the American Dream and whether the United States is the best positioned country in the world for those dreams to be met. Bush said this in his letter:
"Americans could always count on hard work leading to higher incomes and improved lives. The American dream was real and within reach, but today, among the developed nations, we are the least economically and socially mobile country in the world."
PolitiFact decided to look into Bush's claim a little bit further. Reporter Joshua Gillin says Bush's statement rates TRUE. Gillin says that the stats are in sync with Bush's statement.
"The one thing that you have to remember here is that Bush said 'developed nations,' which focuses the claim," said Gillin. "We've looked at similar claims when the claim has said 'overall,' and that lumps in every single country in the world. Here, Bush was specifying developed countries, and there is plenty of research out there that shows that, in terms of people being able to move up from the lower rung of the economic ladder to a higher level, the United States lags behind a lot of the other developed countries."
Gillin said that there's a common graph out there that measures this sort of social and economic mobility.
"We were referred to graph called 'The Gatsby Curve,' which takes its name from the main character in 'The Great Gatsby," said Gillin. "Much like that fictional character, the graph shows the social and economic mobility of the developed countries, and of those 23 countries, the U.S. is usually ranked in the bottom five."
PolitiFact talked to some experts who agreed with Bush's claim. They pointed out that because Bush qualified his claim, there's less of a chance for that statement to come across as vague or muddied, which leads to a TRUE rating by PolitiFact.
Sources: U.S. social and economic mobility
- PolitiFact ruling
- Foundation for Excellence in Education, fundraising letter from Jeb Bush, received Oct. 27, 2014
- Institute for the Study of Labor, "American Exceptionalism in a New Light: A Comparison of Intergenerational Earnings Mobility in the Nordic Countries, the United Kingdom and the United States," January 2006
- Institute for the Study of Labor, "Do Poor Children Become Poor Adults? Lessons from a Cross Country Comparison of Generational Earnings Mobility," March 2006
- Brookings Institution, "Economic Mobility of Families Across Generations," November 2007
- New York Times, "Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs," Jan. 4, 2012
- New York Times, "The Great Gatsby Curve," Jan. 15, 2012
- New York Times, "Equal Opportunity, Our National Myth," Feb. 16, 2013
- National Review, "The Great Gatsby Curve: Not So Great After All," Aug. 21, 2013
- Businessweek, "The Gatsby Curve: How Inequality Became a Household Word," Dec. 12, 2013
- Pew Charitable Trusts, "Economic Mobility and the American Dream: Where Do We Stand in the Wake of the Great Recession," May 19, 2014
- Pew Charitable Trusts, "Pew Finds Generation X Facing an Insecure Financial Future," Sept. 18, 2014
- Interview with Jaryn Emhof, Foundation for Excellence in Education spokesperson, Nov. 4-5, 2014
- Interview with Timothy Smeeding, University of Wisconsin economics professor, Nov. 1, 2014
- Interview with Isabel Sawhill, Brookings Institution economist, Nov. 5, 2014