If equal Danish provision of services does not eliminate inequality in many important life outcomes, the origins of inequality and social immobility lie elsewhere.

An excellent paper, in part because the findings are contrary to what the authors wished to find.  In other words, it is more believable because confirmation bias is more clearly countered.

From Lessons from Denmark About Inequality and Social Mobility by James J. Heckman and Rasmus Landersø.  From the Abstract:

Many American policy analysts point to Denmark as a model welfare state with low levels of income inequality and high levels of income mobility across generations. It has in place many social policies now advocated for adoption in the U.S. Despite generous Danish social policies, family influence on important child outcomes in Denmark is about as strong as it is in the United States. More advantaged families are better able to access, utilize, and influence universally available programs. Purposive sorting by levels of family advantage create neighborhood effects. Powerful forces not easily mitigated by Danish-style welfare state programs operate in both countries.

But that seemingly understates the situation.  From the body of the research.

Many American policy analysts point to Denmark as a model welfare state with low levels of income inequality and high levels of social mobility in income across generations. It has in place many social policies now advocated for adoption in the U.S.: free college tuition, universal access to high-quality health care, equality of per pupil expenditures across all neighborhoods, universal high-quality preK, and generous childcare and maternity leave policy. In addition, there are well funded social security, disability, and unemployment programs in Denmark. Inequality in disposable income is much lower than in the U.S.
 
Yet, despite generous social policies, family influence on many child outcomes in Denmark is comparable to that in the U.S. Common forces are at work in both countries that are not easily mitigated by welfare state policies. Denmark achieves lower income inequality and greater intergenerational income mobility primarily through its tax and transfer programs and not by building the skills of children across generations and promoting their human potential more effectively.
 
Despite the generosity of the Danish welfare state and equality in access for all citizens, substantial inequality of child outcomes remains across social and economic classes. Figure 1 documents these gaps and compares them to their U.S. counterparts. Children of college-educated women do substantially better than children of secondary school dropouts on many dimensions in both countries.
 
Denmark is a laboratory for understanding the origins of inequality and social immobility. In the U.S., inequalities in the public services that are equally provided at a high level in Denmark are major topics in discussions of social mobility. However, if equal Danish provision of services does not eliminate inequality in many important life outcomes, the origins of inequality and social immobility lie elsewhere. Consequently, an uncritical adoption of Danish policy initiatives may not be effective as a way to ensure equality of opportunity.

The goal is noble - that everyone should be able to attain high degrees of achievement.  But the mechanisms to achieve that do not appear to reside with public policy but with family practices and behaviors

This finding by Heckman and Landersø is consistent with the low levels of intergenerational mobility change found by Gregory Clark.  Genetic inheritance compounded by assortative mating is clearly part of the explanation for this low level of intergenerational mobility and low degree of social policy impact.

I have long argued that a third driver is cultural transmission as well, primarily within the family structure.  

I am delighted to see this information because it confirms my intuitions and assessment of the balance of information but it also forces us towards a topic area which is difficult and challenging.  

If the differences in outcomes are genetic and choice based (assortative mating and family cultural transmission) then there is little that can be done to mitigate this in a free society.  Differential individual outcomes become more or less a given.  

This was for a long time understood in the modern Age of Enlightenment era of classical liberalism, though never accepted by passionate utopians.  The huge mitigating factor to the acceptance of inherent variances was the Christian conviction that we are all God's children and all people are worthy of equal respect simply because of that fact.  

The erosion of that conviction, compounded by increasing reliance on meritocracy for societal worth, has essentially demoted citizens with low life accomplishments into second-class citizenship.  This is most easily seen in the class obsession and disrespect extended by low church attending/ high accomplishment meritocrats who are free in their disdain and disrespect for the poor, the lower class, the Bible thumpers, the residents of fly-over country, etc.  

Low church attending/high accomplishment meritocrats demonstrate such arrogance and disdain largely because of a rooted belief that they have earned their status.  And to a reasonable degree, they are correct.  But that accomplishment is earned in the context of a stacked deck.  If you come from an intact and functional family, with good genetic heritage of achievement, and a sustained practice of assortative class mating, the odds are in your favor to a degree which is hard to appreciate.

Everyone suffers reverses and disappointments.  There are no guarantees in life outcomes.  Luck plays a sustained role.  People can rise from the bottom and fall from the top.  But the evidence is increasingly clear that mobility is not easily addressed.  Or even possible in a meaningful way across a population and over time.  

Reviving the Christian (and any other faith which incorporates a comparable belief) belief in the sanctity of life and the equivalence of moral worth as equally redeemed sinners is not a social policy that is conceivably achievable but it seems inescapably a logical conclusion based on observed data.

 

UPDATE:  From a talk by professor Heckman at AEI, The Family is the Whole Story.  His positions are far more nuanced than I have seen characterized in a long time.

“Nobody wants to talk about the family, and the family’s the whole story,” he told Stevens during the event. “And it’s the whole story about a lot of social and economic issues.”

[snip]

“What we really have come to understand is that some of the major growth of inequality has nothing just to do...with hourly wage rates at the factory; it also has to do with the change in family structure in the larger society: more single-parent families,” he emphasized. “And what does that mean, then? It means that often the mother is with the child; she faces the burden of supporting that child, and she faces a lot of stress…financial stress… And by the way, the single-parent family has fewer resources, and so as single-parent families grow, inequality itself grows.” 

[snip]

As someone who has examined early learning and child care policies for over a decade, Dr. Heckman's remarks come both as shock and encouragement. Heckman is unequivocal about the power of the home and how it is undervalued and under-studied both in research and public policy. He champions the importance of mothers, who he acknowledges are generally still the ones taking primary responsibility for babies and toddlers even in our gender-neutral age. To me, it’s a vindication from one of the most cited men on the planet regarding early learning and child care. 

“We do want to harvest the powerful force of love and attachment to the child. That is such a powerful force,” he said, adding later, “I wish the family would get back into more of the center of our lives." 

Parents will always matter more than any program or professional in a child’s life. It doesn’t hurt to have an esteemed Nobel prize winner and early child care expert say so. Now, the difficult challenge is for public policy makers on both sides of the ideological aisle to embrace the Heckman vision in its fullness.  

Indeed.