 Hi, my name is Rachel Black and I'm with the Asset Building Program at the New America Foundation. I'm joined today by Erin Currier from the Pew Economic Mobility Project. Erin, welcome. We're so glad to have you here. Thank you for having me. First, let me ask, what is economic mobility and how do you measure that? Economic mobility is the ability for people to move up and down the income ladder over their lifetimes and across generations. So really, measuring economic mobility is measuring the extent of the American dream. And we measure it two ways. The first is absolute mobility, which looks at income change over time and inflation adjusted dollars. So if you have more money than your parents did at the same age, you've experienced upward absolute mobility. The second way we measure is relative mobility, which is concerned with a person's rank on the income distribution as a whole. And that answers the question of, if your parents were low income, how likely are you to be low income? And according to both those absolute and relative measures, how are we doing? It's a glass half empty and a glass half full. And the glass half full side is the absolute measure. Two-thirds of Americans have higher family incomes than their parents did at the same age. And nowhere is that more true than at the bottom of the income ladder where more than 80% of people have higher family incomes. On the relative side, we see the glass half empty because even though families have experienced incremental increases in their income, sometimes that's not enough to move them out of the bottom of the income distribution overall. 42% of Americans who are raised in the bottom stay in the bottom themselves as adults. These are very stark statistics that you're giving us here. How does America compare to other comparable countries when it comes to economic mobility? Our project just released a report that looks at how the United States compares in terms of economic mobility to Canada and eight other countries in Western Europe. We did this work in partnership with the Russell Sage Foundation and the Sutton Trust. And the results of the research are that the United States looks the worst. Our children are more likely to be in the same position that their parents were than any other nation investigated. Again, another downer statistic. So in addition to all this really comprehensive research that you guys have been doing, I understand that you've also been talking to people themselves to see what their impressions of economic mobility and the opportunities that are available to them are would have been some of the results of that. Our project has done two public opinion polls. One in 2009 and one just a few months ago in 2011. And the purpose of those polls was really to figure out whether Americans identify with the term American dream. How they define economic mobility and what they think the government should be doing to support mobility if anything. We found that Americans absolutely believe that the United States is unique in its ability to promote the American dream. That people's children can be better off than they were. In fact, six of ten Americans believe that they have achieved or will achieve the American dream at some point in their lives. But at the same time, they think the government right now is doing an ineffective job at helping especially poor and middle-income Americans move up the income ladder. And they support policies like post-secondary education and promoting savings that will really help people from the bottom achieve upward mobility. That raises a really important point for those of us both interested in influencing policymakers or sort of shaping the public perception of economic mobility. Are there a couple core recommendations that we could be advocating on behalf of? Absolutely. Our project since its inception has worked with thought leaders from five think tanks in DC area including New America Foundation. But also the Urban Institute, the Brookings Institution, the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute. And in late 2009 these principles came together to develop a policy roadmap. They came up with 22 policy recommendations that they unanimously agreed would support and promote economic mobility. Those recommendations focus on a whole variety of things from human capital development early in a child's life. All the way up to home ownership and even neighborhoods and economic development. All of those recommendations are available on our website at economicmobility.org. Great. Thank you so much, Erin. Thank you. And you can find out more about the role that savings plays in economic mobility at assets.newamerica.net. Thank you so much for joining us.