A steeper ladder for the have-nots

By Derrick Z. Jackson, Globe Columnist | May 18, 2005

IT IS STUNNING to see the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times simultaneously devote a series to the American class divide. The Journal reported last Friday, ''Despite the widespread belief that the US remains a more mobile society than Europe, economists and sociologists say that in recent decades the typical child starting out in poverty in continental Europe or in Canada has had a better chance at prosperity."

In an echo, the Times wrote vitually the same thing, adding that in America, a child's economic background is a better predictor of school performance than in Denmark, the Netherlands, or France. The best that could be said was that class mobility in the United States is ''not as low as in developing countries like Brazil, where escape from poverty is so difficult that the lower class is all but frozen in place."