Alan Jenkins is Executive Director of The Opportunity Agenda, a communications, research and advocacy organization with the mission of building the national will to expand opportunity in America.
During his State of the Union speech last month, President Bush used the word “opportunity” nine times, to talk about our nation’s economy, public schools, immigration policy, energy needs and health care system. The president is correct in suggesting that how opportunity fares is a crucial measure of our nation’s condition. So just what is the state of opportunity in America?
Opportunity is the idea that everyone deserves a fair chance to achieve his or her full potential. It requires equal treatment, economic security and mobility, a voice in decisions that affect us, a chance to start over after missteps or misfortune and a sense of shared responsibility for each other as members of a common society. New research by The Opportunity Agenda shows that the state of opportunity is troubling, but that positive change is possible.
When it comes to economic security, the signs are ominous. The number of Americans without health insurance jumped from 45.3 million in 2004 to 46.6 million in 2005, and is believed to be even higher today. While overall poverty decreased slightly over that period—from 12.7 percent to 12.6 percent—the percentage of women in poverty increased, as did poverty among most communities of color. And in a stunning development, there is not one county in the U.S. today in which a full-time worker earning the current minimum wage can afford a one-bedroom apartment at market rate.
Education has long served as Americans’ most reliable stepping stone to social mobility. But since 2004, the percentage of 25-29 year olds who earned a high school diploma has fallen for the nation as a whole. And, in some cases, racial and ethnic gaps widened.
In an encouraging sign, homeownership—another gateway to mobility—increased slightly between 2003 and 2005, though a substantial racial gap persists. From 2003 to 2005, white homeownership increased from 72.1 percent to 72.7 percent, while homeownership increased to 48.2 percent (from 48.1 percent) among blacks and to 49.5 percent (from 46.7 percent) among Latinos.
While data on equality is hard to come by, we know that the gender wage gap actually increased according to the most recent data. And family income has been growing nearly 12 times more rapidly among the top one percent of income groups than the bottom 90 percent.
The year 2006 saw some improvement in the diversity of voices leading our country, with two more women in the Senate and six more in the House than during the last Congress. And this year the nation gained its first female speaker of the House. In the news media, people of color made slight gains in representation at newspapers, but diversity in the radio news workforce actually declined.
In terms of the chance to start over—what many Americans call redemption—the U.S. continues to set new incarceration records. The number of inmates in state and federal prisons has increased more than six-fold, from less than 200,000 in 1970 to 1,446,269 by 2005. An additional 747,529 are held in local jails, for a total of nearly 2.2 million. And the over-incarceration of African Americans and Latinos remains stark. But two states, Rhode Island and Tennessee, moved to restore voting rights to people who’ve completed their felony sentences or to make it much easier for those Americans to reclaim their voting rights and responsibilities.
Perhaps most telling when it comes to the chance to start over, the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina remains unequal and incomplete, despite over a year of governmental promises. The Brookings Institution reported last month that “infrastructure recovery is largely at a standstill with only one new school opened in December, no new hospitals, no new libraries and only one new child-care center in New Orleans.”
These are just a few signs that our nation’s greatest asset, the promise of opportunity, is fading for millions of Americans. But as the modest improvements in the overall poverty rate, political participation and a few other measures show, it’s possible to turn the negative trends around through a meaningful reinvestment in opportunity for all.
Our government has a crucial role to play in keeping the doors of opportunity open to everyone in our country. But restoring opportunity will require more than the modest efforts that the President proposed in his speech. Flawed proposals like health care tax deductions and shifting money away from under-resourced safety net hospitals, for example, must give way to guaranteed health care for all and assurances of equal access.
The president and congressional leaders must begin to show real moral leadership in forging a positive path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants now living in the shadows. And they must link immigration reform with new efforts to prepare all our workers for a globalized economy. Ensuring that every student has access to college and beyond is crucial to that mission.
Amazingly, the president’s speech did not even mention the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. But the abandonment of the Gulf is a cancer on his presidency, and a key challenge for the new Congress. A range of national organizations, including the Kirwan Institute at Ohio State University, the Center for Social Inclusion, the NAACP, the Brookings Institution and The Opportunity Agenda have proposed concrete measures that can restore the Gulf consistent with principles of hope and opportunity. And groups in the region have clearly voiced their needs and priorities. The President’s willingness to hear their call will be a crucial measure of his next year in office.
