Economist **Randy Albelda** examines the rise in U.S. social immobility and the role that contemporary labor conditions have played in limiting Americans’ expectations to do better than their parents’ generation. Union organizer **Joey Mokos** responds by discussing the ways that the modern union movement is responding to changes in our worklife. What role does social mobility play in a healthy democracy? Is faith in progress—personal and societal—a necessary condition for civic engagement?
Randy Albelda is professor of economics and senior research fellow at the Center for Social Policy at University of Massachusetts Boston. She has worked as research director of the Massachusetts State Senate’s Taxation Committee and the legislature’s Special Commission on Tax Reform. A labor economist, her research and teaching cover a broad range of economic policies affecting low-income women and families. In addition to many academic journal articles and policy reports, she is coauthor of the books, Glass Ceilings and Bottomless Pits: Women’s Work, Women’s Poverty; Unlevel Playing Fields: Understanding Wage Inequality and Wage Discrimination; and The War on the Poor: A Defense Manual. Albelda co-led the Bridging the Gaps project bringing together researchers and advocates from nine states and Washington, DC to examine the gaps between basic needs and earnings in light of welfare reform in the 1990s. In 2012 Albelda co-authored the report, “How Youth Are Put At Risk by Parents' Low-wage Work,” exploring the impact of poverty on social mobility across generations.
