Separated at Birth - Thomas Edsall - The New York Times

Do the courts have any responsiblity for this? Any role in changing it?  Should they?

Separated at Birth - The New York Times

by Thomas Edsall

A report recently released by the Russell Sage Foundation — “Opportunity, Mobility, and Increased Inequality” — concludes

that 60 percent of those born into a bottom-quintile family will themselves be in the bottom two quintiles of the income distribution at age forty, and that 56 percent of those born into a top-quintile family will be in the top two quintiles of the distribution at age forty.

If we focus just on the least well off, the United States today is moving toward “increasing inequality of opportunity,” with the gains over the past several decades for those in the bottom of the income distribution modest, at best, or non-existent.