Charlotte is improving its economic mobility, according to a new study released on Thursday. A Harvard University-based research group ranked Charlotte as No. 38 of among 50 cities nationally. The research looks at how one generation is doing financially compared to the generation that came before it.
The city was also ranked No. 3 out of 50 on economic mobility progress. Charlotte ranked last in the original study conducted in 2014. Ten years ago, the city came in behind Raleigh and Atlanta, which were ranked 48th and 49th, respectively. THE STUDY The 2014 study looked at members of Generation X who were specifically born in 1978. And the follow-up study looked at millennials born in 1992. The improvement comes from work that was done in the early 2000s, said Sherri Chisholm, the executive director of Leading on Opportunity, which is an initiative at Foundation for the Carolinas.
Economist Raj Chetty led the research group during both studies. The 2024 study reveals that while racial gaps are closing, class gaps are widening nationally, Chetty said in Thursday’s press release. “These results show that growing up in thriving communities — places where adults are employed and healthy and otherwise doing well — have a tremendous effect on the next generation,” Chetty said. “The new data shows that opportunity can change and points to lessons on how to change inter-generational opportunity in a fairly rapid time frame.” There isn’t a specific initiative during that time the organization can point to as the reason Charlotte’s ranking increased, but public-private partnerships have helped, Chisholm said.
Leading on Opportunity has put a lot of focus into continuing those relationships in the last 10 years, Chisholm said. One example includes Charlotte Executive Leadership Council’s partnership with Mecklenburg County Schools where different leaders in companies provide resources. “If you look at other communities that were towards the bottom of the list, like Charlotte, they did not see the type of improvement that Charlotte has seen,” Chisholm said. “And we attribute this to public-private partnerships.” IMPROVING CHARLOTTE Charlotte leaders were shocked to find out the city ranked last in 2014, pushing them to take action to help with future rankings, Chisholm said.
Since then, leaders and organizations within the city, such as Leading on Opportunity, have been working to improve Charlotte’s economic mobility by bringing together the corporate and nonprofit communities with the government to find solutions. Leading on Opportunity was created in 2017 to find ways it could improve the city’s economic mobility. And in 2022, the organization launched its Opportunity Compass, which measures how much progress Charlotte has made. AJ Calhoun is Leading on Opportunity’s director of research and impact. His role is to develop tools, such as the Opportunity Compass, that can help show the city and the organization’s partners which areas they need to focus on. Data on early childhood has led Mecklenburg County to invest more in pre-kindergarten education, Calhoun said.
“The real power of these things working together is that we have local data that tracks us towards some of these national trends and helps us to see … a little bit faster and more tactically, what ought we to do next,” Calhoun said. Chisholm said she felt an immense amount of pride and excitement after seeing the results of the study. But just because Charlotte has moved up in the rankings doesn’t mean the city’s work is done, Chisholm said. It’s easy to drop in the rankings, she said. “What we need next is what we’re doing now,” Chisholm said. “I’d love to see more (policy) that institutionalized the programmatic work that folks have been contributing for a very long time.”
