The Opportunity Atlas: Mapping the Childhood Roots of Social Mobility

We construct a public atlas of mean outcomes in adulthood by childhood census tract. Outcomes vary sharply across neighborhoods: For children whose parents earn $27,000, the standard deviation of mean household income in adulthood is$10,420 across tracts within counties. Only half the variation in outcomes is explained by traditional measures of neighborhood opportunity like poverty rates. Experimental and quasi-experimental estimates indicate 60 percent of the variation in outcomes across neig