The achievement gap between children from high income and low income families is roughly 30-40% larger among children born in 2001 than among those b… - Robert D. Putnam

these costs total about $500 billion per year, or the equivalent of nearly 4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). More specifically, we estimate that childhood poverty each year: (1) reduces productivity and economic output by an amount equal to 1.3 percent of GDP, (2) raises the costs of crime by 1.3 percent of GDP, and (3) raises health expenditures and reduces the value of health by 1.2 percent of GDP.

As inequality has increased,” she writes, “debate about the extent of mobility in American society has heightened. As income gaps have widened, the opportunity that children have to do better than their parents is increasingly important. . . . Whether they do so at a faster or slower rate than they did in the past is not a settled question. But since the rungs of the ladder are further apart than they used to be, the effects of family background on one’s ultimate economic success are larger and may persist for a longer period of time.”2

Neighborhoods are important sites of growing class segregation.