By Oli Turner, Atlanta Way 2.0 Journalism Fellow
In Atlanta, leaders and concerned citizens are uniting over a troubling statistic. Atlanta ranks 50th out of 50 U.S. metropolitan areas in upward economic mobility, according to a 2024 study by Harvard Economics professor Raj Chetty. If that strikes you as grim, it is—but Atlantans may find hope in Charlotte, N.C.’s story. Chetty’s first study in 2014 ranked Charlotte 50th, and in just 10 years, Charlotte jumped to 38th on the same scale.
For Atlantans concerned about the status of their own metro area, Charlotte’s success story may provide a path forward. But first, it’s crucial to understand what economic mobility might look like here in Atlanta and identify an index to measure it with.
The nonprofit Atlanta Way 2.0 held its inaugural Atlanta Way Day on Thursday, Sept. 25 to facilitate conversations among thought leaders, experts, and champions for a better Atlanta. Sherri Chisholm, executive director of Charlotte’s nonprofit Leading on Opportunity, delivered a keynote address outlining methods Charlotte used to improve its standing. Leading on Opportunity unites organizers across five key wellness areas, taking a systemic approach to improving the opportunity trajectories of individuals in Charlotte.
How do we measure economic mobility?
Economic mobility is a complex metric combining a range of lifestyle factors. The term is inherently abstract, which is why it’s important for each city to develop its own shared civic vocabulary around the topic.
“When it comes to doing the work of economic mobility, you have to look at the constellation of things that makes a life a good life for someone—so that’s everything from education to workforce to housing to grocery stores,” Sherri Chisholm said.
Neighborhood Nexus Co-founder Mike Carnathan described upward economic mobility as a generational journey. After meeting basic needs like stable housing, food, healthcare, and transportation, he said, the next factors in economic mobility are quality education and social capital, which one can build by forming new interpersonal connections and having experiences outside of their socioeconomic status.
The next tier of the economic ladder might be acquiring a quality job with benefits that allows you to live in a thriving neighborhood with ample resources. The final level of mobility is the ability to build wealth and pass it onto the next generation, Carnathan explained.
Raj Chetty’s Opportunity Insights study followed the outcomes of children born in low-income families, comparing their parents’ economic position to the children’s economic position as adults 27 years later. While Chetty’s study is a cornerstone for efforts toward economic mobility—and a galvanizing force for concerned citizens—communities need more frequent checkpoints in order to evaluate their progress.
“Chetty’s not coming to save us,” Chisholm said. “We need to figure out how to hold ourselves accountable and measure ourselves.”
Chisholm explained Charlotte’s use of an “opportunity compass” to measure economic mobility progress across specific determinants over two or three years.
“It tells if we’re working in a positive or negative direction and helps us make adjustments along the way,” Chisholm said. “It also serves as a North Star for folks who want to either invest or provide programming in that work.”
Chisholm is adamant that the work towards improving economic mobility is a gradual and simultaneous effort. Instead of tackling one area at a time, cities should unite leaders from all sectors that contribute to economic mobility and collaborate to effect calibrated change.
The Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) oversees long-range planning for metro Atlanta, identifying which investments will be necessary over the next 30 to 50 years to accommodate the area’s growth. The ARC is 95% federally funded. The organization uses data to make projections for the region’s future and invest government funding in workforce development, housing and transportation goals, and other initiatives the data has identified to help the city prosper.
A collective consciousness
Speakers on the keynote Upward Economic Mobility Panel underscored the importance of developing a shared understanding of economic mobility and a shared feeling of responsibility to help improve it.
“It’s a unifying theme that touches across multiple issues that we care about,” said Frank Fernandez, president and CEO of Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta.
“We need to lean into how we work together,” Fernandez said. “I think we have a good example of that here in the city of Atlanta around housing. The mayor talks about the city and housing as a group project, really underscoring the importance of how we collaborate across sectors with each other to move the needle.”
Champions of upward economic mobility can look to United Way of Greater Atlanta’s Child Well-Being Index as a model for developing a collective consciousness around an issue. United Way President Milton Little partnered with data nonprofit Neighborhood Nexus to create an indicator for child well-being outcomes.
“There are dozens and dozens and dozens of organizations out there, all of them doing work focused on kids, everybody measuring things differently, no collective measure of success,” Little said. “We want it to be used by everybody who’s working in the children, youth, family, community space so that we all have a common set of measures and a common endpoint against which we can look at our efforts and think about what the cumulative impact of all of these efforts is.”
ARC Executive Director and CEO Anna Roach advocated for a process of public acknowledgement and commitment around upward economic mobility in Atlanta.
“It starts with an open admission that there is a problem, and then an open and public commitment to solve it,” Roach said. “We know how to reach people in Georgia, across the country, and across the world. We know how to make explicit what our intentions are. And so if we wanted to do that as a city, as a county, and as a region, we could.”
Note to current and future Activators: A call to action!
Atlanta Way 2.0 pledges to continue the work of convening interested citizens and leaders around this topic. We hope you will join the movement to improve outcomes for our residents in several ways:
Become an Atlanta Way 2.0 Activator: https://www.atlantaway.org/become-an-activator
Subscribe to Neighborhood Nexus economic mobility data updates: https://neighborhoodnexus.org/atl-econ-mobility/
Volunteer to host an economic mobility workshop in November or January. Email Britton Edwards.
This year, Atlanta Way 2.0 and SaportaReport are partnering on an initiative to strengthen the civic fabric of greater Atlanta through journalism. We have a new Fellow, Oli Turner, who will share their journey here in our weekly column.
Very impressive piece! Well written and insightful. Can’t wait to hear more from you Oli!
I’ve read your story twice and, both times I have asked myself: “why are we placing such importance on a study created by one economist that doesnt even live in the region?”
Also, this metric is obviously too heavily skewed towards high-earners (something that Emory wants to be #1 at producing). “Chetty’s first study in 2014 ranked Charlotte 50th, and in just 10 years, Charlotte jumped to 38th on the same scale. ” Charlotte also enjoyed much of the exodus from NYC so, naturally the speciously “producing” finance bros brought their grift to Charlotte thus skewing the data.
We need to stop hitching our perceived advance as a society to flimsy measurements and “hard data” collected by a of ‘yes’ men who cannot see the nuances in why some people here are not as economically mobile as a city with a more transient population.
Same thing for the economic numbers we are force fed, same thing with the climate numbers which we are writing in to policy.
People are too lazy to think critically and instead, just opt for the easy solution of accepting and basing their perceptions off of something that may or may not be real.
Whats more; upon looking at the study, this fish-wrap if a study doesnt even account for the loss of purchasing power of the currency, which should be your main story.
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and for following SaportaReport. The economic mobility study by Raj Chetty referenced in this piece represents one of the most comprehensive analyses available on this issue. While it is not the only perspective, it has received national attention and serves as a critical catalyst for renewed conversation about economic mobility.
Atlanta Way 2.0 is committed to broadening that conversation — exploring not only the data but also the human stories and systemic factors that shape outcomes in our region, including the purchasing power of currency and other dimensions of the story.
Oli, our journalism fellow and a recent graduate, is helping us make these complex topics accessible and relevant to a wider audience. This column serves as an introduction to the larger series we are developing — with additional, in-depth pieces to follow.
We appreciate your engagement and hope you’ll continue to follow as the series unfolds.
Until the state of Georgia begins to seriously address 1) housing stability: 2) public education: 3) expanding Medicaid and 4) very low wages for those in the bottom 20-30% of the income spectrum, no local efforts will produce much change. The region is too fragmented and groups like ARC have no significant power in these areas. It will require change in the legislature and the governor’s office, at a minimum.
People don’t move to ATL for it being a great place to live. I’d bet the ARC won’t bother to mention the income and age of just who it is who moves into Atlanta. It ain’t Sr Directors @ Oracle.
You’ll notice mostly silence on Norfolks move out and what it means, why it happened. That’s wealth leaving. So was Suntrust to the point of Charlotte being a leader.