Issues
At the Archbridge Institute, we bring a fresh perspective to academic research
by encouraging a multidisciplinary approach to better understand
the nature of economic mobility.
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Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Job Creation
For most, a job is still the best way to climb the income ladder. In addition to providing income, jobs offer opportunities to gain skills, knowledge, and experience as well as grow social and professional networks that enable people to flourish, perhaps even by creating something new themselves. Innovators and entrepreneurs play a crucial role in maintaining and expanding these opportunities.
Economic and Social Mobility
To the extent that the American Dream can be quantified, intergenerational economic mobility has become the quintessential data point. To what extent are people able to exceed their parents income as adults? How should we measure that and have these measurements changed over time? Are there trends we can observe in these areas? This section explores these questions in precise detail.
Education and Skill Development
Doing productive work, meeting the needs of the market, or pushing toward the next innovation are often results of well developed human capital. That means developing and maintaining both more formal cognitive skills and less formal social or “soft” skills. Both are important aspects of ensuring that individuals have the space to develop the competencies they need both in education and in the labor force.
The American Dream
The Dream of America is one where every person, no matter their background, is free to live a better, richer, and fuller life. This section explores how that idea is understood today, using a combination of polling, data, and insights from contemporary strivers seeking to build and live their own American Dreams.
Meaning and Existential Agency
Building on the commitment to a multidisciplinary approach to questions of economic mobility and human flourishing, this section combines cutting edge research and public polling to bring the tools of psychology into conversation with those of economics to provide a richer picture of these concepts.
Social Capital and the Independent Sector
While sound public policies are important, there is a limit on what government policy can achieve. Ultimately, true transformation and flourishing is discovered and lived at an individual level. Personal relationships of reciprocal responsibility are an essential part of truly flourishing. Better understanding, facilitating, and highlighting the people and institutions engaged at this level of engagement is a key part of understating the puzzle of human flourishing.
Recent Studies
Early Childhood Education Programs: Best Practices
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Summary
Early childhood education programs play a crucial role in promoting social mobility by providing disadvantaged children with a strong foundation for lifelong success. These programs recognize the importance of the early years in shaping a child’s development and aim to mitigate the effects of socioeconomic disparities that can hinder upward mobility.
Building soft skills for the Future of Work
Click here to open the PDF in a new tab. Key Points Over the past several decades, the nature of the economy has shifted from a goods-based economy to a service-based economy. This shift has also changed the kinds of skills most sought after and rewarded in the labor...
American Dream Snapshot 2023
Click here to open PDF in a new tab. With the 2024 presidential election starting to take shape, America’s spiral toward further polarization and tribalism seems poised to continue. Economic challenges are front and center in people’s minds, including a spending and debt crisis, inflation, banking uncertainty, and the possibility of a coming recession.
The Archbridge Institute is a non-partisan, independent, 501(c)(3) public policy think tank. Our mission is to lift barriers to human flourishing.
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