Episode Details

The American dream is often presented as the product of someone "pulling up their bootstraps" to a better life. But that’s just one way of explaining an idea that economists call "economic mobility.” A new project by St. Louis Magazine, the Economic Mobility Lab, is diving into that idea and the research into what it takes for low-income kids to out-earn their parents. To understand economic mobility in St. Louis, we sit down with St. Louis Magazine senior editor Nick Phillips to talk about his latest story, "How one St. Louisan found something rare: upward economic mobility." We also meet Nehemiah Colyer, whose experience after changing schools to Parkway West High School is an example of what economists call "social capital" and “economic connectedness.”