Our Story
In 2016, Urban Institute researchers began a multiyear effort to better understand upward mobility and identify solutions to the challenges of persistent generational poverty in the US. Through engagement with academics and people with lived experience, research and evidence gathering, and work in communities, that effort evolved into the Upward Mobility Initiative. Today the initiative focuses on providing local leaders with data and tools to assess and improve community conditions that advance upward mobility and racial equity.
The timeline below shows how we got here and how the initiative has progressed since it was created.
2016–18
The Urban Institute hosted the US Partnership on Mobility from Poverty, which sought to better understand what it would take to dramatically increase mobility from poverty in the US.
In 2018, the Partnership developed a comprehensive definition of upward mobility, after a year of gathering insights from research, practice, and people who have experienced poverty. The three-part definition explains that to achieve true upward mobility, people must not only have economic success but also power and autonomy and dignity and belonging. Building on this work, the Partnership offered a series of interrelated strategies that could be pursued nationally and locally to begin to significantly increase mobility from poverty for people and communities.
Though the Partnership ended in May 2018, its work spurred new questions about the key conditions communities need for all people to be able to attain upward mobility. What specific factors contribute to or block mobility? What could policymakers, practitioners, and other community leaders do today to start achieving the long-term outcomes embedded in the Partnership’s definition of mobility?
2019–2020
Urban formed a Mobility Metrics working group of distinguished scholars to explore the evidence on intermediate factors that influence long-term mobility from poverty for adults, families, and children. We rigorously vetted the most predictive factors and developed ways to measure them—called Mobility Metrics—which communities can use to guide and assess their efforts to advance mobility.
We also conducted a landscape scan to find programs around the country that have been shown to increase mobility from poverty in communities. This led us to identify six exemplary interventions that successfully supported people’s economic success, power and autonomy, and dignity and belonging.
2021–22
Urban provided technical assistance to a cohort of eight cities and counties across the country to help them apply the Upward Mobility Framework. Over 18 months, participants learned how to use the framework to develop their own plans to increase upward mobility and racial equity in their communities.
We have chronicled cohort participants’ experiences and spotlighted key insights through our Upward Mobility blog and at events and webinars to share concrete examples of what mobility looks like in practice.
In 2022, we updated the Upward Mobility Framework, using the feedback and lessons learned from the cohort participants, further expertise from our Mobility Metrics working group, and insights from ongoing conversations and research.
We adjusted the framework to make the importance of racial equity more explicit and to include the five interconnected, essential pillars of community support all people need to thrive. The five pillars are rewarding work, high-quality education, opportunity-rich and inclusive neighborhoods, healthy environment and access to good health care, and responsive and just governance. We also added or updated several metrics and predictors to better reflect both research and the priorities of people working on upward mobility in communities.
2023–2025
Building on our partnerships and lessons learned since 2016, we expanded our training and technical assistance support to 26 additional cities and counties and to five upward mobility networks. We continue to share insights from that work, equip leaders with data and evidence, and make our tools and resources accessible to communities nationwide.
