A new study, reported in the New York Times, confirms that children who grow up in areas with higher than average levels of marriage and higher than average levels of religious practice are more likely to be upwardly mobile in later life.

According to the study, some of the favoured ways of tackling poverty such as larger tax credits for the poor and higher taxes on the affluent seem to improve income mobility only slightly.

Furthermore, the number of local colleges and their tuition rates had little impact on social mobility, the study suggested,

Four broad factors appeared to improve social mobility, the study said (while warning that correlation is not causation), namely,

·         Dispersing poor families among mixed-income neighborhoods

·         Good primary and secondary schools

·         More two-parent households

·         Higher membership in religious and community groups

As the study itself says: “Finally, some of the strongest predictors of upward mobility are correlates of social capital and family structure. For instance, high upward mobility areas tended to have higher fractions of religious individuals and fewer children raised by single parents.”

The study backs up evidence amassed by Charles Murray in his most recent book, Coming Apart, In it, Murray directly links marriage to upward social mobility. He also notes the massive reluctance on the part of the media to report this evidence.

Murray writes: “I know of no other set of important findings that are as broadly accepted by social scientists who follow the technical data, liberal as well as conservative, and yet are so resolutely ignored by network news programmes, editorial writers for the major newspapers and politicians of both major political parties.”

The New York Times itself more or less demonstrates Murray’s point by neglecting to emphasise that marriage and religion are two important predictors of upward mobility.

In failing to stress these things, papers such as the New York Times are not only pandering to their own prejudices, they are also failing poorer people. In this, of course, Ireland is no different.