The Opportunity Atlas: Mapping the Childhood Roots of Social Mobility
The authors link anonymized federal tax records to census data to estimate children's adult outcomes by the neighborhood in which they grew up, at the Census-tract level for the entire United States. They build the Opportunity Atlas, showing that mobility varies enormously even between adjacent tracts and that childhood environment causally shapes later outcomes. The data reveal which specific neighborhoods foster upward mobility and identify correlates such as poverty rates, family structure, and racial composition.