The Urban Institute’s Upward Mobility Framework defines upward mobility as having three essential, interconnected dimensions: economic success, power and autonomy, and dignity and belonging. It identifies more than 20 evidence-based predictors that are strongly associated with those dimensions of mobility. The Mobility Metrics are a suite of short- and medium-term measures of each predictor. This appendix documents the criteria used to select metrics for each predictor and provides the set of years, available disaggregations, and data sources used to construct each metric on the Upward Mobility Data Dashboard. It is updated whenever data in the dashboard are updated.

This appendix will be updated in the summer of 2026 to reflect changes made to the Mobility Metrics and the Upward Mobility Data Dashboard between May 2025 and May 2026.

The May 2025 version of this appendix was corrected on June 3, 2025. On page 51, we have updated the text to reflect a methodological change. The two metrics we use to measure the "transportation access" indicator are the share of commuters who use public transit (not the transit trips index, as previously stated) and the share of income spent on transportation.

Previous Versions

September 2024 (corrected October 18, 2024)

• On page 17, the "Available Data" section for the "Ratio of the Share of Total Home Values Owned by a Racial or Ethnic Group to the Share of Households of the Same Group" metric has been revised to show that different years of data are used for counties and cities. A previous version suggested the same years are used for both geographies.