:Class Matters【2】【3】
『希望格差社会』のなかでも
- 作者: 山田昌弘
- 出版社/メーカー: 筑摩書房
- 発売日: 2004/11
- メディア: 単行本
- 購入: 2人 クリック: 115回
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A paradox lies at the heart of this new American meritocracy. Merit has replaced the old system of inherited privilege, in which parents to the manner born handed down the manor to their children. But merit, it turns out, is at least partly class-based. Parents with money, education and connections cultivate in their children the habits that the meritocracy rewards. When their children then succeed, their success is seen as earned.[・・・] In place of the old system, Dr. Wanner [president of the Russell Sage Foundation] said, have arisen "new ways of transmitting advantage that are beginning to assert themselves."
(May 15, 2005 Shadowy Lines That Still Divide By JANNY SCOTT and DAVID LEONHARDT)
自分の子に、富裕な親は当然のことながら資産を婉曲的なかたちではあれ投資したいと願う。その世代間の所得移転を表現するに際して、transmitという単語が用いられているのがなんとも肉感的で生々しい。いまや資産は、生物学的な特質を遺伝子を通じてそうするように、我が子に受け継がれるものだと感覚されているのかもしれない。
One study, by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, found that fewer families moved from one quintile, or fifth, of the income ladder to another during the 1980's than during the 1970's and that still fewer moved in the 90's than in the 80's. A study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics also found that mobility declined from the 80's to the 90's.
社会的流動性は、70年代以降、低下し続けている。
As Phillip Swagel, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, put it, "We want to give people all the opportunities they want. We want to remove the barriers to upward mobility."
Yet there should remain an incentive for parents to cultivate their children. "Most people are working very hard to transmit their advantages to their children," said David I. Levine, a Berkeley economist and mobility researcher. "And that's quite a good thing."
One surprising finding about mobility is that it is not higher in the United States than in Britain or France. It is lower here than in Canada and some Scandinavian countries but not as low as in developing countries like Brazil, where escape from poverty is so difficult that the lower class is all but frozen in place.
一般に思われていることとは逆に、アメリカの階層間移動は、イギリスやフランス、北欧諸国よりも低いのだという。
"Anything that creates turbulence creates the opportunity for people to get rich," said Christopher S. Jencks, a professor of social policy at Harvard. "But that isn't necessarily a big influence on the 99 percent of people who are not entrepreneurs."
These success stories reinforce perceptions of mobility, as does cultural myth-making in the form of television programs like "American Idol" and "The Apprentice."
[・・・]This has helped produce the extraordinary jump in income inequality. The after-tax income of the top 1 percent of American households jumped 139 percent, to more than $700,000, from 1979 to 2001, according to the Congressional Budget Office, which adjusted its numbers to account for inflation. The income of the middle fifth rose by just 17 percent, to $43,700, and the income of the poorest fifth rose only 9 percent.
[・・・]Those widening differences have left the educated and affluent in a superior position when it comes to investing in their children. "There is no reason to doubt the old saw that the most important decision you make is choosing your parents," said Professor Levine, the Berkeley economist and mobility researcher. "While it's always been important, it's probably a little more important now."
