Americans consistently believe that poor African Americans are more likely to move up the economic ladder than they are, a new study shows.
“…Many people don’t know how much harder it is for African Americans to achieve (the American Dream) than it is for white people.” – Jesse Walker, co-author of the study and assistant professor of marketing at The Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business.
People also overestimate how likely poor white people are to get ahead economically, but to a much lesser extent than they do for Black people.
“It’s no surprise that most people in our society believe in the American Dream of working hard and succeeding economically,” said Jesse Walker, co-author of the study and assistant professor of marketing at The Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business.
“But many people don’t know how much harder it is for African Americans to achieve that dream than it is for white people.”
The good news in the study was that making people aware of economic racial disparities, or merely having them reflect on the unique challenges that Black Americans face in the United States, helped people calibrate their beliefs about economic mobility.
Walker conducted six studies with Shai Davidai, assistant professor of management at Columbia Business School at Columbia University.
In one study, they asked participants to estimate the chances that a randomly selected child born to a family in the lowest income quintile (0 to 20%) would rise to one of the four higher income quintiles. They made two predictions, one for a white child and one for a Black child.
Results showed that participants overestimated upward mobility for the white child by about 5%, but overestimated mobility for the Black child by about 16%. white Americans’ actual likelihood of moving up from the bottom quintile is 69%, compared to 52% for Black Americans.
The researchers also measured how likely the participants thought the randomly selected poor child would be able to rise to the top of the economic heap—one of the two highest income quintiles (those in the top 40% in terms of income). Here participants again overestimated the odds of the Black child reaching those heights but underestimated the chances of the white child doing so.
It wasn’t just white Americans who held these misperceptions. A separate study found that Black participants were similarly inaccurate in their estimation of a Black child’s probability of moving out of poverty.
While the results cannot say why this happened, Davidai said it may be that Black Americans—particularly those in the lower economic groups themselves—want to believe in their chance at economic success.
“No one wants to believe there is no American Dream out there for them,” Davidai said.
Results from other studies in the series suggested that people can more accurately assess the chances of poor Black people moving up if they are reminded of economic racial disparities or even just think about the problems Black people face in the United States.
In one study, participants were shown one of two graphs before they estimated the probability of poor white or Black Americans moving up economically. One showed the distribution of wealth by income quintiles, revealing that the richest 20% of Americans own 81% of private wealth.
The remaining participants were shown a graph of the distribution of wealth in the United States by ethnicity, revealing that white people own 89% of private wealth, compared to Black people, who own 1.3%.
In this study, those who were shown the graph highlighting general economic inequality overestimated a poor Black person’s chances of moving up the economic ladder by about 20%. But those who were shown the graph revealing racial economic inequality were quite accurate in their beliefs about economic mobility.
“Making people think about the racial economic disparities in this country made them much better able to estimate the real chances of Black Americans getting ahead economically,” Davidai said.