So, about those 'diminished levels of upward mobility' ...

It was a pretty worthless exercise without first defining the quintiles and comparing them to those of 20 years earlier.

 

Because the "average economic penalty" is worse. Previously, your parents could be in the bottom fifth, and you could still have a pretty good life as a bottom fifther. You'd be in the bottom fifth, but closer to the top fifth than you would be today.

 

Maybe, but that's a rather small and finite distinction for the guy to be painting it as a conclusion of their study, yes?

Also have to wonder if "income at age 30" is the best way to explain it. Many many factors including:

--propensity of upper-class kids to spend many years in graduate school and thus probably not have strong incomes by age 30, the benchmark for the entire study
--lack of income growth in blue-collar jobs, which means a person might appear to be doing well at age 30 but is earning the exact same nominal amount (and less in real dollars) at age 40 or 50
--ability of upper-class progeny to take jobs in education, social work, journalism or some other "do what you love" field, which would drop them into a lower quintile in a study like this but would still keep them very well-off in real life
--and as I mentioned before, the time limit of the study -- it is measuring people born no later than 1982, which means these people by and large finished high school (certainly) and college (probably) before the economic crater went off in the U.S. and the "jobless recovery" became the new normal

 

Yes, these are all good points.

As frequently happens, the news headline oversimplifies the conclusions of an academic study. Once it gets into the criteria, the study shows what it purports to show, and doesn't show what it doesn't purport to show.