Economic Mobility
OBC’s long-standing vision and strategy framework for economic development, with leading-edge traded sector companies as the engine, is necessary but insufficient. The strategy has produced well-paying jobs and good living standards for those who can access them. However, Raj Chetty’s economic mobility work finds that job growth, by itself, does not foster economic mobility and, in some places, job growth has amplified economic disparities across races and ethnicities.
In 2020, OBC refined its strategy under the Oregon Business Plan to bring greater focus on community and state conditions that foster economic mobility and racial equity. In particular, family and education supports for Oregonians with fewer means will help them achieve greater agency, financial stability, and personal and family wealth. Public investments in wellness check-ins, nurse home visiting, childcare, and prekindergarten equalize opportunity and set children up for a life of learning. And importantly, the investments should also support parenting education and paid family leave.
Another major strand of a mobility initiative, though it will take a number of years, is to desegregate housing, which can unlock residential opportunities in neighborhoods across the state. Isolation is a major barrier to mobility. Too many low-income children in the U.S. and Oregon grow up in neighborhoods and schools with high poverty concentrations. Neighborhood and school segregation cuts off access to income-diverse networks, mentors, and jobs. That segregation is rooted in systemically racist lending, zoning, and education policies imposed for generations on BIPOC communities. Oregon has taken an important, first step to dismantle these policies, including the nation-leading HB 2001 that re-legalizes multi-family housing throughout larger cities and towns. The vision is a good one but will face sustained opposition as it moves to implementation.
One early, easy win is providing better access to well-designed, evidence-based programs that already exist, including the federal and state-funded Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). The heart of this challenge is providing culturally specific and appropriate responses to the needs of children and families. We must support community-based organizations and include them as central to the strategy for improving economic mobility.
