Is the American Dream equally accessible? 

This question lies at the center of decades of work discussing and dissecting the tenants of economic mobility. Researchers, academia and thought leaders have generally concluded the answer to this is a resounding “no,” pointing to data like the work uncovered by Dr. Raj Chetty that demonstrates the importance of the neighborhood characteristics where you grew up on future opportunity. Though we understand the challenges, the solutions are more nebulous.

"Just 8 men have the same wealth as half the population of the world."

– Dr. James Green, Director, Palm Beach County Community Services Department

In 2019, leaders in Palm Beach County decided to try a new approach to solving these challenges. Recognizing the need for a systems change, the county joined forces with community-based organizations, nonprofits and other local service providers to start the Securing our Futures Initiative (SOFI). This initiative aligns county and community resources towards a set of principles, intending to create efficiencies in service provision that ultimately lead to upward financial mobility for unemployed and underemployed residents. Seeing an additional need for cross-collaboration – and to break down silos existing across providers and government – Palm Beach County hosted the first annual SOFI Summit on December 5, 2022.

"Look at the circles you are a part of and see who is missing, then figure out why they are missing and how you can bring them in."

– SOFI Panelist

The summit consisted of plenaries and breakout sessions dedicated to the aspects of human service provision across the county beginning with a keynote from Dr. Raj Chetty on the determinants of economic mobility.

Characteristics of high-mobility neighborhoods include lower poverty rates, more stable family structure (2-parent families) and better school quality – both K-12 and higher education. However, one often overlooked factor remains important: greater social capital. Social capital refers to the connectedness to the community & strength of the community including connectedness, cohesiveness and civic engagement. Communities with more cross-class interaction tend to be the places where economic mobility can thrive. Both exposure and inter-socioeconomic interaction are equally important conditions to generate mobility. It’s who you reach out to when looking for a job, educational opportunities or housing; it’s the networks and relationships you create to support, encourage and nurture you. And, perhaps the most important, it’s about fueling the aspirations of children by demonstrating that it can be done – and it can be done by them.

There are a few critical settings in which social capital is most likely to be erected: neighborhoods, educational settings (e.g., college and K-12) workplaces and recreational groups. It is important to recognize the appropriate scale in each of these. For example, bigger schools tend to exhibit more friending bias (interactions limited to people in the same or similar socioeconomic margins) even though they may be more diverse. A few policy solutions that can facilitate social capital include reducing segregation to help low-income families move to high-opportunity areas, making place-based investments to increase upward mobility in low-opportunity areas and improving higher education to amplify the impacts of colleges on mobility.

In addition to social capital, counties can work with partners to increase economic mobility by creating spaces for residents to build intentional relationships with each other. In other words, counties can help to build a support network that allows residents to fail forward and connect to opportunity. Doing so also alleviates the externality of creating a desert of opportunity, ensuring residents don’t have to move to achieve mobility. Circles USA, an organization that specializes in building community, recommended providing nudges, such as dinner or gas cards, to help get people in the door. Other breakout panels discussed leveraging food assistance for economic mobility, the social determinants of health and criminal justice reform.

"How do you get people to the table? Each one bring one - create space at the table and bring others, who will then bring others and grow the tree."

– SOFI Panelist

In the afternoon, two plenaries discussed the importance of place-based investments and leveraging technology to create systemic efficiencies. When considering policy solutions and place-based investments, it is imperative policy leaders ask the tough questions: who benefits, and who pays. Thoroughly examining these questions help to identify potential equity impacts of legislation before it’s passed, ensuring the solutions put forth address the challenges and, perhaps more importantly, don’t create inequities along the way.

Technology solutions can help in this effort. Document burden – a barrier often exacerbated when implementing new policies – is one of the biggest barriers for low-income residents. A significant amount of data is already available or collected by counties every day, but it requires identification and the proper skillset of staff to leverage it appropriately. Data is essential in economic mobility because it supports the building of organizational capacity, creates new economic mobility tools, helps local leaders communicate and tell the story, streamlines partnerships with other entities and organizations and allows for evidence-based decision-making.

In both place-based investments and data, there exist opportunities for collaboration with the private sector. Nearly every major corporation has top-level executives focusing on data and equity; getting the executives of businesses involved ensures there is skin in the game for system change and fruitful collaboration.

These themes were also reflected in the afternoon panel block on housing barriers. As Palm Beach County celebrates the passing of a $200 million bond initiative to support more affordable housing, local leaders are faced with the challenge of ensuring the implementation is equitable, targeted and effective. Lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, such as streamlining coordinated entry to services including housing services, provide learnings that can be carried through to other services and systems. Other afternoon panels included childcare for the public good, opening the door through education and the importance of transportation in getting around to get ahead.

"COVID was a storm in the sea, and people had different boats to navigate it."

– SOFI Panelist

The Securing our Futures Initiative: Economic Mobility Summit was funded in part through the NACo COVID-19 Recovery Cohort Project, aimed at building capacity for communities for equitable recovery from the pandemic and its economic fallout. The recovery cohort project is generously funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.