Adapted in part from the "Opportunity in America" series of policy briefs, this volume focuses on social and economic mobility in the United States. Class or family background has a strong effect on individual success, the authors find. They examine the possible reasons for this relationship; how it has changed over the past century; and the role of the economy, the welfare system, and education in opening up opportunities for the less fortunate.

Individual perceptions about economic mobility could influence one's achievement motivations and prospects about the future. Such perceptions have significant downstream implications on consumption and sense of well-being. This dissertation introduces perceived economic mobility as an individual difference variable, which reflects the degree to which individuals perceive a society as mobile in the way that it allows people to move up or down the economic ladder in relative standing, and investigates how it affects impulsive spending and subjective well-being interacting with materialism. In Essay 1, I illustrate how perceived economic mobility moderates the linkage between materialism and impulsive spending. Using various data sources, four studies show that materialistic consumers do not easily engage in impulsive spending when they perceive high economic mobility, whereas they tend to spend impulsively when they perceive low economic mobility. I trace this effect to the self-regulation process of materialistic consumers, such that when perceiving high economic mobility, they regulate their behavior toward long-term financial success, sacrificing the pleasure of acquisitions in the present. In Essay 2, I investigate the moderating role of perceived economic mobility on the relationship between materialism and subjective well-being. Three empirical studies show that materialistic consumers can be happy just like non-materialistic consumers when they perceive high economic mobility, while they show low subjective well-being when they perceive low economic mobility. I suggest that the moderating role of perceived economic mobility is mediated by expected chance of achieving financial success, such that when perceiving high economic mobility, they expect that they can reach material affluence they dream of. Such optimistic prospects for the future enable them to be less vulnerable to the gap between current and ideal status in regard to standard-of-living, which reduces one's subjective well-being otherwise. By elucidating the important role that perceived economic mobility plays on impulsive spending and subjective well-being, the current research sheds a fresh light on consumer research and offers public policy implications.

The story of men who are hurting—and hurting America by their absence Man Out describes the millions of men on the sidelines of life in the United States. Many of them have been pushed out of the mainstream because of an economy and society where the odds are stacked against them; others have chosen to be on the outskirts of twenty-first-century America. These men are disconnected from work, personal relationships, family and children, and civic and community life. They may be angry at government, employers, women, and "the system" in general—and millions of them have done time in prison and have cast aside many social norms. Sadly, too many of these men are unsure what it means to be a man in contemporary society. Wives or partners reject them; children are estranged from them; and family, friends, and neighbors are embarrassed by them. Many have disappeared into a netherworld of drugs, alcohol, poor health, loneliness, misogyny, economic insecurity, online gaming, pornography, other off-the-grid corners of the internet, and a fantasy world of starting their own business or even writing the Great American novel. Most of the men described in this book are poorly educated, with low incomes and often with very few prospects for rewarding employment. They are also disproportionately found among millennials, those over 50, and African American men. Increasingly, however, these lost men are discovered even in tony suburbs and throughout the nation. It is a myth that men on the outer corners of society are only lower-middle-class white men dislocated by technology and globalization. Unlike those who primarily blame an unjust economy, government policies, or a culture sanctioning "laziness," Man Out explores the complex interplay between economics and culture. It rejects the politically charged dichotomy of seeing such men as either victims or culprits. These men are hurting, and in turn they are hurting families and hurting America. It is essential to address their problems. Man Out draws on a wide range of data and existing research as well as interviews with several hundred men, women, and a wide variety of economists and other social scientists, social service providers and physicians, and with employers, through a national online survey and in-depth fieldwork in several communities.