The Meritocracy Trap

by Daniel Markovits

  has lost nearly a third of its residents: St. Clair Shores first appears on the U.S. Census in 1930 with a population of 6,745 and grew rapidly through the middle of the twentieth century to peak at 88,093 in 1970. Since then, the population has been slowly but consistently declining. The population recorded in the 2010 Census was 59,715. See U.S. Census Bureau, “Decennial Census of Population and Housing,” accessed June 28, 2018, www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census/decade/decennial-publications.2010.html.

  tallest building in town: See “History of City,” City of St. Clair Shores Michigan, accessed June 28, 2018, www.scsmi.net/98/History-of-City.

  the only hotel in town: The Shore Pointe Motor Lodge was incorporated in Michigan in 1967 as the Shorian Motor Inn and changed its name around 1980. See Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs, “Summary for Shorian Motor Inn, Incorporated,” LARA Corporations Online Filing System, accessed June 28, 2018, https://cofs.lara.state.mi.us/CorpWeb/CorpSearch/CorpSummary.aspx?ID=800022201.

  nearly ten million middle-class jobs: See Chapter 6.

  As the incomes of the top: In 1975, median household income was $47,879 (in 2016 dollars). In 2016, median household income was $59,039 (in 2016 dollars). That is an increase of 23.3 percent. In 2000, median household income was $58,544 in 2016 dollars. Between 2000 and 2016, median incomes increased less than 1 percent. U.S. Census Bureau, “Historical Income Tables: Households,” Current Population Survey, last modified August 28, 2018, accessed June 28, 2018, Table H-5, www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-income-households.html.

  In 1975, the average income (including capital gains) of a household in the top 1 percent of the income distribution was $345,565 (in 2014 dollars). In 2014, that average was $1,283,775 (in 2014 dollars). That is an increase of 271.5 percent. See Facundo Alvaredo et al., World Inequality Database, distributed by WID.world, accessed July 3, 2018, https://wid.world/data/, Average Fiscal Income (wid.world code afiinc992t, by tax unit for all adults).

  narrow cadre of exceptional students: See, e.g., Dominic J. Brewer, Eric R. Eide, and Ronald G. Ehrenberg, “Does It Pay to Attend an Elite Private College? Cross-Cohort Evidence on the Effects of College Type on Earnings,” Journal of Human Resources 34, no. 1 (Winter 1999): 104–23, 114.

  radio and television advertisements: “Macomb trains the workforce that keeps our communities healthy, safe, and secure,” says one such television commercial over footage of students in scrubs and firefighters’ suits. Macomb College, “Macomb: Comcast Advertisement,” YouTube video, 0:30, January 17, 2012, accessed June 28, 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=v99EWhqhvP0. See also Pat Vitale and Joe Petroskey, “The Community College Corner,” Macomb Community College radio advertisement.

  Some students: Niche.com allows high school students to report where they are interested in going to college. The colleges with over a hundred reports of interest from St. Clair Shores public high schools are Saginaw Valley State University, Grand Valley State University, Eastern Michigan University, Western Michigan University, Central Michigan University, Oakland University, Michigan State University, Wayne State University, Macomb Community College, and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, as of July 2018. Only the last of these is elite. See “Lake Shore High School,” Niche.com, accessed July 25, 2018, www.niche.com/k12/lake-shore-high-school-saint-clair-shores-mi/; “Lakeview High School,” Niche.com, accessed July 25, 2018, www.niche.com/k12/lakeview-high-school-saint-clair-shores-mi/academics/; and “South Lake High School,” Niche.com, accessed July 25, 2018, www.niche.com/k12/south-lake-high-school-saint-clair-shores-mi/.

  make the local paper: Anonymous residents in conversation with the author, St. Clair Shores, Michigan, May 2–3, 2018.

  are barely better represented: See Chapter 5.

  by nearly six to one: See Chapter 5.

  the entire bottom half: See Chapter 5.

  an advanced (post-BA) degree: In 2015, 12 percent of American adults reported having finished an advanced degree. See Camille L. Ryan and Kurt Bauman, “Educational Attainment in the United States: 2015,” U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports no. P20-578 (March 2016), accessed June 30, 2018, 2, Table 1, www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2016/demo/p20-578.pdf.

  Top public schools: In the 2013–14 fiscal year, Lakeview Public Schools, one of three school districts serving St. Clair Shores, spent a total of $10,309 per student. Michigan’s wealthiest school districts spent twice as much (see, e.g., Bloomfield Hills Schools, $24,166 per student). The nation’s wealthiest districts spent three times as much (e.g., Cold Spring Harbor Central School District, $32,540 per student). See National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), distributed by the Institute of Educational Sciences, accessed June 30, 2018, https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/districtsearch/index.asp.

  might share a music teacher: Anonymous resident in conversation with the author, St. Clair Shores, Michigan, May 2, 2018.

  Newton, Massachusetts: Robert Reich, “Back to School, and to Widening Inequality,” Robert Reich, August 25, 2014, accessed June 30, 2018, http://robertreich.org/post/9574931970 [inactive]. Hereafter cited as Reich, “Back to School.”

  Coronado, California: Motoko Rich, “Nation’s Wealthy Places Pour Private Money into Public Schools, Study Finds,” New York Times, October 21, 2014, accessed November 17, 2018, www.nytimes.com/2014/10/22/us/nations-wealthy-places-pour-private-money-into-public-schools-study-finds.html.

  A careful study of one large county: Sharon Jank and Lindsay Owens, Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, “Inequality in the United States: Understanding Inequality with Data,” slide 16 (referencing Demetra Kalogrides and Susanna Loeb for the Center for Education Policy Analysis, Stanford University 2012, Data from Miami-Dade County School District Administrative Staff Data, 2003–2011), accessed June 30, 2018, https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2017/2017094.pdf, and https://inequality.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/Inequality_SlideDeck.pdf. Hereafter cited as Jank and Owens, “Inequality in the United States.”

  a teacher in St. Clair Shores observes: Anonymous resident in conversation with the author, St. Clair Shores, Michigan, May 2, 2018.

  six times the national public school average: See Chapter 5.

  more than twice as many teachers: Student/teacher ratios at elite private schools are roughly 7:1, while the average student /teacher ratio at public schools nationwide is 16:1. See Thomas D. Snyder, Cristobal de Brey, and Sally A. Dillow, Digest of Education Statistics: 2016 (February 2018): 149, Table 208.10, accessed July 3, 2018, https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2017/2017094.pdf, and U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, “Pupil/Teacher Ratio of Private Schools, by School Level and Selected School Characteristics: United States, 2013–14,” Private School Universe Survey (PSS), accessed July 3, 2018, https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pss/tables/table_2013_12.asp.

  fully three-quarters of the teachers: Among Forbes’s 20 Best Prep Schools, the average percentage of teachers with an advanced degree is 76.3 percent. See Raquel Laneri, “America’s Best Prep Schools,” Forbes, April 29, 2010, accessed July 3, 2018, www.forbes.com/pictures/fl45mj/americas-best-prep-sc/#7ce0256e4ea0.

  Brown v. Board of Education: For children born in the 1940s through the 1960s, the achievement gap between black and white children was much larger than that between the richest and the poorest students. For children born in the last two decades, the achievement gap between the richest and the poorest children entering kindergarten is “two to three times larger than the black-white gap at the same time.” See Sean F. Reardon, “The Widening Academic Achievement Gap Between the Rich and the Poor: New Evidence and Possible Explanations,” in Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality and the Uncertain Life Chances of Low-Income Children, ed. Richard Murnane and Greg Duncan (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2011), 99. Hereafter cited as Reardon, “The Widening Academic Achievement Gap.” Sean Re
ardon, “No Rich Child Left Behind,” New York Times, April 27, 2013, accessed July 3, 2018, https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/27/no-rich-child-left-behind/. Hereafter cited as Reardon, “No Rich Child Left Behind.”

  Economic inequality today: See Chapter 5.

  The academic achievement gap: See Chapter 5.

  Rich children now outscore: See Chapter 5.

  Only about one in two hundred: See Chapter 5.

  fewer than one out of every fifty: See generally, Gary Solon, “Intergenerational Mobility in the Labor Market,” in Handbook of Labor Economics, vol. 3, ed. Orly Aschenfelter and David Card (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1999).

  A poor or middle-class child: See Isabel Sawhill and John E. Morton, “Economic Mobility: Is the American Dream Alive and Well?” Economic Mobility Project, 2007, www.economicmobility.org/reports_and_research/mobility_in_america; Miles Corak, “Do Poor Children Become Poor Adults? Lessons from a Cross Country Comparison of Generational Earnings Mobility,” Research on Economic Inequality 13 (2006): 143–88; Anders Bjorklund and Markus Jäntti, “Intergenerational Income Mobility in Sweden Compared to the United States,” American Economic Review 87, no. 5 (1997): 1009–18; Markus Jäntti et al., “American Exceptionalism in a New Light: A Comparison of Intergenerational Earnings Mobility in the Nordic Countries, the United Kingdom and the United States,” IZA Discussion Paper 1938, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) (2006); Miles Corak, “Income Inequality, Equality of Opportunity, and Intergenerational Mobility,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 27, no. 3 (2013): 79–102; Simon Boserup, Wojciech Kopczuk, and Claus Kreiner, “Intergenerational Wealth Mobility: Evidence from Danish Wealth Records of Three Generations,” University of Copenhagen mimeograph (2013), http://web.econ.ku.dk/eprn_epru/Seminar/WealthAcrossGen.pdf; and Emily Beller and Michael Hout, “Intergenerational Social Mobility: The United States in Comparative Perspective,” Future Child 16, no. 2 (2006): 19–36.

  The odds that a middle-class child: See Chapter 8.

  that he could not buy: Canlis restaurant in Seattle, to name just one example, offers only one dinner option—a four-course menu for $125. A bottle of beer costs up to $136; and a bottle of wine costs up to $22,500 (although this admittedly buys a magnum). Canlis, “Menu,” accessed August 1, 2018, https://canlis.com/menu; Canlis, “Wine List,” accessed August 1, 2018, https://canlis.com/uploads/Canlis%20Wine%20List%206.19.18.pdf.

  When asked who is important: Anonymous residents in conversation with the author, St. Clair Shores, Michigan, May 2–3, 2018.

  “People don’t like the elite”: Anonymous resident in conversation with the author, St. Clair Shores, Michigan, May 3, 2018.

  “I’ve never hired anybody”: Anonymous resident in conversation with the author, St. Clair Shores, Michigan, May 3, 2018.

  “you can’t feel successful”: Anonymous resident in conversation with the author, St. Clair Shores, Michigan, May 3, 2018.

  “You’ve either made it or not”: Anonymous resident in conversation with the author, St. Clair Shores, Michigan, May 3, 2018.

  “felt middle class” here: Anonymous resident in conversation with the author, St. Clair Shores, Michigan, May 2, 2018.

  “Steady good”: Anonymous resident in conversation with the author, St. Clair Shores, Michigan, May 3, 2018.

  It feels better: See generally Robert H. Frank, Choosing the Right Pond: Human Behavior and the Quest for Status (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), and Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, The Inner Level: How More Equal Societies Reduce Stress, Restore Sanity, and Improve Everyone’s Well-Being (London: Penguin Press, 2019). I owe this formulation of the thought—better to be at the center of your own society than on the margins of someone else’s—to Maisie Bilston.

  it will never be in St. Clair Shores: See Dennis Quaid’s speech in the 1979 film Breaking Away: “You know, I used to think I was a really great quarterback in high school. Still think so, too. Can’t even bring myself to light a cigarette ’cause I keep thinkin’ I gotta stay in shape. You know what really gets me, though? I mean, here I am, I gotta live in this stinkin’ town, and I gotta read in the newspapers about some hot-shot kid, new star of the college team. Every year, it’s gonna be a new one. Every year it’s never gonna be me.” Steve Tesich, Breaking Away, DVD, directed by Peter Yates, Los Angeles: 20th Century Fox, 1979.

  less safe and less controlled: Anonymous resident in conversation with the author, St. Clair Shores, Michigan, May 3, 2018.

  mortality rates (especially among middle-aged men) rise: In 1999, midlife mortality rates among white non-Hispanics stopped falling and began to rise, even as mortality rates among older people and other racial and ethnic groups continued to fall. Anne Case and Angus Deaton note that “deaths of despair”—deaths related to drug overdoses, suicides, and alcohol poisoning—account for much of this increase. Their data collect suicide, overdose, and alcohol-related deaths per 100,000 persons for white, non-Hispanic fifty- to fifty-four-year-old men and women, by their level of education. For men with a high school degree or less, this rate increased by 130 percent between 1998 and 2015; for men with a BA or more, it increased by 44 percent. For women with a high school degree or less, this rate increased 381 percent; for women with a BA or more, it increased by 70 percent. Case and Deaton argue that declining job prospects and economic insecurity are the most compelling explanations for this trend. See Anne Case and Angus Deaton, “Mortality and Morbidity in the 21st Century,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (Spring 2017), accessed July 5, 2018, www.brookings.edu/bpea-articles/mortality-and-morbidity-in-the-21st-century/. Hereafter cited as Case and Deaton, “Mortality and Morbidity.” David Autor, David Dorn, and Gordon Hanson demonstrate a similar correlation between manufacturing trade shocks and declining rates of marriage and fertility. See David Autor, David Dorn, and Gordon Hanson, “When Work Disappears: Manufacturing Decline and the Falling Marriage Market Value of Young Men,” NBER Working Paper No. 23173 (January 2018), www.nber.org/papers/w23173.

  a college degree or more: See Chapter 5.

  For two straight years now: For increases in mortality among middle-aged white Americans, see Anne Case and Angus Deaton, “Rising Morbidity and Mortality in Midlife Among White non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st Century,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 112, no. 49 (December 2015): 15078–83, accessed July 5, 2018, www.pnas.org/content/pnas/112/49/15078.full.pdf. Hereafter cited as Case and Deaton, “Rising Morbidity.” For decreases in American life expectancy, see Kenneth D. Kochanek et al., “Mortality in the United States,” NCHS Data Brief No. 293 (December 2017), 1–2, accessed July 5, 2018, www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/data briefs/db293.pdf.

  The last two-year decrease: More recently, the AIDS epidemic produced a one-year decrease in life expectancy in 1993. See Elizabeth Arias, Melonie Heron, and Jiaquan Xu, “United States Life Tables, 2014,” National Vital Statistics Reports 66, no. 4 (August 2017): 45–46, accessed July 5, 2018, www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr66/sr66_04.pdf.

  The billboards along I-94 East: I took the drive on May 2, 2018.

  seven times as many: See Jameson Cook, “Deaths from Heroin and Opioid Overdoses Rise in Macomb County, State,” Macomb Daily, April 24, 2017, www.macombdaily.com/article/MD/20170424/NEWS/170429741 [inactive].

  rising mortality overall: See Case and Deaton, “Rising Morbidity.” If midlife white mortality rates had continued to decline at their 1979–98 rate, Case and Deaton report, half a million deaths would have been avoided during 1999–2013—roughly comparable to the death toll of the U.S. AIDS epidemic through 2015.

  “deaths of despair”: The phrase was coined by Case and Deaton and popularized by media coverage of their 2017 study. See Drake Baer, “Economic Forces Making US Men Less Appealing Partners, Researchers Say,” CNN, September 28, 2017, accessed July 6, 2018, www.cnn.com/2017/09/28/health/american-men-less-marriageable-partner/index.html;
Joel Achenbach and Dan Keating, “New Research Identifies a ‘Sea of Despair’ Among White, Working-Class Americans,” Washington Post, March 23, 2017, accessed July 6, 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/new-research-identifies-a-sea-of-despair-among-white-working-class-americans/2017/03/22/c777ab6e-0da6-11e7-9b0d-d27c98455440_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_whitedeaths-1am-1%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.04bad358697c.

  make such extreme demands: One study surveyed 4,317 students from ten high-performing public and private schools in upper-middle-class communities and found that students spent an average of 3.11 hours on homework per night. Students at one of the ten schools reported spending 3.59 hours on homework per night. See Mollie Galloway, Jerusha Conner, and Denise Pope, “Nonacademic Effects of Homework in Privileged, High-Performing Schools,” Journal of Experimental Education 81, no. 4 (2013): 498, accessed July 10, 2018, www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00220973.2012.745469#.Ux3fF_ldXTo. See also Pope’s anecdotal evidence in Denise Pope, “Doing School”: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 83. One student with whom Pope spoke at an elite California school spent “at least five hours” per day on homework.