Jason DeParle has written an article on social mobility in the U.S. and northern Europe. It is much, much better than many of us have to expect from the prestige press, in part because DeParle is an unusually careful and fair-minded reporter. (He cites National Review more than once in the piece, along with a number of left-of-center voices.)

The article is accompanied by an infographic contrasting intergenertational mobility in the U.S. and Denmark. A friend, who is well to my left, makes two observations: apart from the bottom fifth, the picture looks very similar in both countries. What would happen if we compared European-origin populations in both countries, to account for the distinctive experiences of migrants from the global South and members of Black Atlantic diaspora populations? And what would happen if we tried to account for the impact of incarceration on wages and household income?

If anything, I’m struck by how Denmark doesn’t fare much better in comparison to a society that incarcerates an astonishingly large number of young men, though of course that partly reflects the fact that the study doesn’t account for the incarceration boom of the 1980s and 1990s.

Moreover, the idea that it would be a good thing if U.S. incomes at the 90th percentile were much lower strikes me as odd. Danish incomes at the 10th percentile are slightly higher than U.S. incomes at the 10th percentile while U.S. incomes at the 90th percentile are much higher than Danish incomes at the 90th percentile. It would be a very good thing indeed if U.S. incomes at the 10th percentile were much higher – though of course this would involve trade-offs, particularly if we use steep minimum wage increases or curbs on the migration of less-skilled workers or, as we’ve discussed, if we transitioned from an EITC to an NIT, thus reducing labor force participation among the poor while raising wages for poor workers — but I’m not sure a lot of people who read only the headlines about mobility have a really good understanding of what’s going on.

The notion of an EITC to NIT transition helps concentrate the mind: any policy decision involves trade-offs. Focus on one lever, like absolute incomes at the bottom, and you might see erosion along some other dimensions, like labor force participation. Erratic shifts of emphasis, exacerbated by the demands of partisan competition, might hurt more than they help.