Income Mobility in the United States

It is a common belief that "the poor" and "the rich" are static blocks of people who are pretty much "stuck" in their places. Data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis illustrates why this is a misperception. For those U.S. households that were in the lowest earnings quintile in 2001, only 56 percent of those households remained in that quintile six years later. Of those who were in the top quintile in 2001, one-third had moved to a lower quintile by 2007.