Upward Mobility Framework
The Urban Institute’s Upward Mobility Framework provides an evidence-based foundation for efforts to advance upward mobility and racial equity for people and communities. It offers local leaders a holistic definition of upward mobility and identifies factors they can influence to increase mobility for all people, especially those historically excluded from prosperity.
The framework includes a three-part definition of economic and social mobility, a focus on racial equity, five pillars of support people need from their communities, and 24 predictors of the strength of these pillars that communities can influence to help more residents reach long-term prosperity.
The following sections explain the Upward Mobility Framework’s components and how local leaders can apply them to advance upward mobility and racial equity.
Three-Part Definition of Upward Mobility
Upward mobility for people and communities is the ultimate goal of the framework. We define upward mobility as having three interconnected dimensions.
Dignity and belonging: people feel the respect, dignity, and belonging that come from contributing to their family, work, and community and are valued for those contributions
Economic success: people have adequate income and assets to support their and their family’s material well-being
Emphasis on Racial Equity
Many of the barriers that block people’s economic success, power and autonomy, and dignity and belonging result from long-standing—and ongoing—racism that is built into policies, processes, institutions, and culture. Supporting people’s upward mobility therefore requires confronting and eliminating racial inequities.
For this reason, racial equity acts as the thread that connects all the framework’s components, from the predictors of mobility and how they are measured to the desired outcome of equitable upward mobility. Local leaders applying the framework must embed racial equity in both their processes and their outcomes to ensure they serve those who have been most harmed.
In the process of boosting upward mobility, leaders must seek to understand and address the root causes of inequities and how racial injustices intersect with other forms of oppression based on gender, age, disability, and other characteristics. Essential to this work is empowering residents who have experienced poverty and racism in setting priorities and identifying solutions.
Achieving racial equity in outcomes requires that policies, practices, and resources confront and overcome the root causes of today’s inequities and injustices. This entails systematic reforms to all five pillars of support so they enable everyone—especially those excluded from prosperity—to achieve economic success, build power, and experience dignity.
Essential Pillars of Support
People cannot surmount systemic barriers to upward mobility on their own. Communities must ensure residents can access the supports all people need to achieve economic success, power and autonomy, and dignity and belonging. The framework identifies five interconnected pillars of support that are essential to mobility.
Rewarding Work
Rewarding work pays a living wage, provides dignified work conditions, and offers economic security.
High-Quality Education
High-quality education—from preschool through postsecondary—provides a crucial avenue to economic and social mobility.
Opportunity-Rich and Inclusive Neighborhoods
Opportunity-rich and inclusive neighborhoods play a central role in supporting families’ stability and well-being, their access to social and economic opportunities, and children’s chances to thrive and succeed.
Healthy Environment and Access to Good Health Care
Healthy environment and access to good health care help people of all ages to surmount life’s challenges, excel in school and at work, ensure their families’ well-being, and fully participate in their communities.
Responsive and Just Governance
Responsive and just governance engages residents in decisionmaking and serves the needs of all community members with restraint and fairness.
Local leaders can use the next framework component—the predictors—to build or bolster these pillars to help more residents reach upward mobility.
Predictors
For local leaders to improve the conditions that lead to upward mobility and racial equity, they need to know what to change and how. The predictors give them that information.
The predictors are 24 factors strongly associated with long-term economic success, power and autonomy, and dignity and belonging. Examples of predictors across the five pillars include living wages, access to preschool, housing stability, access to health services, and political participation.
Local leaders can measure the status of each predictor and progress toward improving it using our suite of Mobility Metrics. Each metric offers one way to start assessing and monitoring a predictor over the medium term. For example, we use the share of 3- and 4-year-olds in preschool or nursery school as a way to measure the access to preschool predictor.
The Mobility Metrics should not be viewed as the only data communities need to inform mobility strategies. They perform the vital function of directing local leaders’ attention to barriers that warrant further information gathering, analysis, and discussion.
Rewarding Work
High-Quality Education
Opportunity-Rich and Inclusive Neighborhoods
Healthy Environment and Access to Good Health Care
Responsive and Just Governance
Learn More
Dig deeper into the evidence behind the framework and the ways local leaders can use it to increase upward mobility and racial equity for people and communities.
