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The Dynamics of Opportunity in America

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Henry Braun discusses inequality of opportunity and its impact on growing numbers of Americans, future generations, and the nation as a whole

Image courtesy of interviewee. May 30, 2024

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This video is a transcript discussing the findings of a collaborative research project that began in 2007, led by Dr. Irwin Kirsch and others, focusing on the evolving complexities of opportunity in America. The initial publication, "America's Perfect Storm," highlighted three critical trends: shifting demographics, widening skills gaps among different racial and ethnic groups, and changing job market requirements. These trends suggested that, without intervention, the U.S. would face significant challenges in cultivating a workforce capable of meeting future demands.

The researchers later expanded on this work by examining the concept of opportunity and its implications for human and social capital. Human capital encompasses both cognitive skills (such as literacy and problem-solving capabilities) and social capital, which refers to the networks and norms that facilitate support and engagement within society. Over recent decades, there has been a notable decline in social capital, particularly among working-class men, resulting in social isolation and increased rates of despair.

The study emphasizes the correlation between human and social capital, with children in disadvantaged circumstances facing more barriers ("gates") that hinder their development, further widening gaps in opportunity. As children progress to adulthood, these disparities manifest in significant differences in socioeconomic outcomes, making mobility increasingly challenging.

The findings suggest a systemic, sustained approach is necessary to support children, particularly through structured interventions that open these gateways to opportunity. Strategies such as integrated student support programs are highlighted as potential solutions to address non-academic barriers that hinder learning, demonstrating the need for a more robust support system that can operate across generations. The researchers call for a comprehensive understanding of these dynamics to foster equitable opportunities for all children in the U.S.

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Here are some key quotes extracted from the video:

1. "In 2007, we published a small monograph called, uh, America's Perfect Storm, in which we argued that three trends were going to lead to a very problematic situation for the United States."

2. "Those three trends were demographic trends, increasing skills gaps between different races and ethnicities, and changes in the job market and the kinds of skills that good jobs would require."

3. "What we were able to show was that if the demographic trends proceeded as expected, and if the skills gaps even remain constant, then the human capital available to the country over the next 25, 30 years would be insufficient to meet the needs of the workplace."

4. "Opportunity has many different definitions. We chose it to mean, the pathways that allow individuals to develop the human and social capital that they will require in order to succeed in life's outcomes."

5. "Human capital in our view represents a broad range of cognitive skills, including foundational skills like literacy and numeracy, but also what we might think of as more advanced skills such as analytics, problem solving, and so on."

6. "Social capital corresponds to the networks of connections to individuals and organizations that can provide support and advice through your lifetime."

7. "What we've seen over the last probably 30 or 40 years is a tightening of the coupling between human and social capital."

8. "There's been this really rupture between the two different socioeconomic classes."

9. "What we see is an increasingly steep gradient between the outcomes in the marketplace and the human and social capital you bring to the fore."

10. "By the time children reach the age of 18, say the typical end of high school in the United States, there are very substantial gaps between children who are born in disadvantage and those who are born in advantage."

11. "We shouldn't live in a society in which we expect children to be heroes in order to succeed."

12. "The extremes of socioeconomic status are very sticky."

13. "What we find... is that the compounding of disadvantage and the compounding of advantage leads to an increasing hardening of socioeconomic status inter-generationally."

14. "We must be systematic in opening those gates for them."

15. "The damage that's been done over the last 40 or 50 years cannot be undone in a single generation."

16. "Integrated student support provides support for children to deal with non-academic barriers to learning."

These quotes encapsulate the core themes of the video regarding the trends affecting opportunity, human capital, social capital, and socioeconomic disparities in the United States.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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It goes back to 2007.

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All the work that I'm gonna describe was done in

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collaboration with, Dr. Irwin Kirsch

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of the educational testing service in Princeton, New Jersey.

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And back in 2007, he and I

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and some other colleagues,

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published a small monograph called,

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America's Perfect Storm, in which we argued

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that three trends were going to lead to a

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very problematic situation for the United States.

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Those three trends were, demographic trends,

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with increasing proportion of non-whites,

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within the American population, increasing skills, gaps

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between, different races and ethnicities,

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and thirdly, changes in the job market

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and the kinds of skills that good jobs would require.

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And what we were able to show was

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that if the demographic trends, proceeded as expected,

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and if the skills gaps even remain constant,

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then the human capital available to the country,

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over the next 25, 30 years would be, insufficient

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to meet the needs of the, of the workplace.

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And we then decided that several years later to follow

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that up with a more in depth, review of the situation,

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and particularly with an intensive focus on the notion

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of opportunity, where it was, where it wasn't,

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and the implications for America going forward.

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Of course, opportunity has many different definitions.

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We chose it to mean, the pathways that

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allow individuals to develop the human

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and social capital that they will require in order

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to succeed in life's outcomes, whether it's work, family,

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or civic participation.

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We decided among other things that we wanted to,

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develop a, a more academic volume

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that would explore the different perspectives

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and different aspects of the problem

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of opportunity in America.

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And so we solicited, scholars in, very, in a range

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of different domains, including education,

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education history, education law, macroeconomics,

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labor, economics, demography,

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public policy, and so on.

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And I'm very happy to say that everyone that we approached,

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agreed to, participate

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as an author is really quite, quite, remarkable.

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And I think the volume that we produce, if I may say, is,

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represents really a milestone in a multidisciplinary,

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look at the problem of opportunity.

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Human capital in, in our view, represents a, a,

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a broad range of cognitive skills,

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including foundational skills like literacy and numeracy,

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but also what we might think of as more advanced skills such

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as analytics, problem solving, and so on.

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But it also incorporates interpersonal

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and interpersonal skills, which research shows are

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as important as cognitive skills in,

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predicting success in the workplace,

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in academics and in the workplace.

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For us, social capital, corresponds to sort

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of the networks of con of connections, if you will,

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to individuals and organizations that can provide support

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and advice through, your lifetime.

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But it also represents, the norms of behavior

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that govern the way in which people interact

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with one another and the way in which they conduct

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themselves, both in private and in public.

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And what we've seen over the last probably 30

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or 40 years, is a tightening of the coupling, if you will,

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between human and social capital.

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40 years ago, 50 years ago, even working class,

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even lower working class men,

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or let me just focus on men for a moment in America, had

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typically a fair amount of social capital through their

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participation in unions, in churchgoing,

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in social and sports clubs.

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And this provided them with the kinds of networks

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and norms of behavior that, corresponded in some sense

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to the kinds of social capital that individuals say with,

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college, education who are working in white collar

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or professional, occupations.

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But over the last 40, 50 years has been well documented

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and a wonderful book

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by Robert Putnam at Harvard on bowling alone,

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particularly white men have fallen off the wagon, so

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to speak, in terms of being able to,

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develop those social capital, connections, either

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because of the demise of unions, decline in church going,

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lower participation in these sorts of social clubs,

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and so on and so on.

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And they find themselves, of course, with many exceptions,

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increasingly lonely, without trusted friends and so on.

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And as has been documented by, case

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and Deaton, they, they are more likely to suffer from

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what are called the deaths of despair.

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At the same time, middle class

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and upper middle class, men have continued pretty much

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as they had two

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or three decades ago in terms of the kinds

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of activities they participated in,

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the social connections they maintain, their rates

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of marriage, childbearing,

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workplace connections, and so on.

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So there's been this really rupture, if you will,

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between, the two different socioeconomic classes.

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What's also very important then, is that as we see,

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human capital and social capital are more tightly connected,

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so that college now that college age,

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women are more likely to attend college.

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In fact, at this point, more likely than men,

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it's more likely than that.

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Men of college with college degrees are gonna marry women

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with college degrees,

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and together they bring their human capital

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and their, you know, their independent networks into,

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into the family home, so to speak.

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And that then benefits their children, of course.

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Whereas, young adults,

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in lower socioeconomic classes

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with perhaps a high school diploma, perhaps not,

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are more likely to, match up with one another,

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with a dearth of human capital, lower social capital,

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norms of behavior that, speak to, for example, out

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of, out of, wild luck childbirth, increasing rates

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of divorce and separation and so on.

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So there's been this, if you will, a broadening

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of the distribution of what we could call total capital.

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And at the same time

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as we predicted in America's Perfect Storm,

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there is an increasingly steep gradient between,

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for example, outcomes in the marketplace,

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in the workplace, and the human

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and social capital you bring to the, to the fore, so

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that those with more human

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and social capital are more likely

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to reap the rewards of today's economy.

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And those in the lower end of the human

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and social capital distribution are more likely

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to be suffering a dearth of success, either unemployed,

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underemployed, or employed in low wage, low benefit jobs.

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So we see this increasingly increasing polarization,

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if you will, of the prospects for individuals.

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The dynamics of opportunity, which is the title

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of the book is, is very complex as the 14

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or so chapters, readily attest.

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Um, so I just wanna focus on one aspect of it, which is

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the dynamics of opportunity as they play out in, in the life

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of a child from, gestation, if you will,

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all the way through, the high school years.

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And we, were very interested in trying

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to develop a narrative that would speak to a broad audience,

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not just to our fellow academics.

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And the, the narrative we, develop involves a framework

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that we call gates, gaps

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and gradients, if you'll pardon the alliteration.

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Um, and the idea is that, as I said, human capital

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and opportunity are, are pathways

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and what a child meets, along those pathways are gates.

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Some of those gates are open,

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in which case the child is able to move along that pathway

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and accumulate the human of social capital

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that's age appropriate.

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But for others, the gates are only a jar

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or even entirely closed.

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And for those, the gates are closed,

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and may be poor per parenting, poor nutrition, lack

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of, housing, et cetera, et cetera.

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Um, they're forced to take pathways that are less productive

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and less likely to yield the, as I say, the human

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and social capital that,

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that they would need as they progress.

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And what we see then is a dynamic,

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a very powerful dynamic, I'd say, between gates and gaps.

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And as gaps increase,

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those at the disadvantage meet more gates that are closed.

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And so the gaps widen in comparison to those children

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for whom the gates are open,

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and they are able to reverse those pathways,

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in a very productive, way.

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And what we then see is that

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by the time children reach the age of 18,

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say the typical end of high school in, in the United States,

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there are very substantial gaps between children

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who are born in disadvantage

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and those who are born in advantage.

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Now, that's not to say that children,

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in the lower socioeconomic groups or,

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or for whatever reason

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by themselves in problematic circumstances,

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can't rise above that.

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They have the inner resilience, the, the chance meetings

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and so on that propel them, to, a station above

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where they might expect.

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But, as we like to say,

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we shouldn't live in a society in which we expect children

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to be heroes in order to succeed.

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The gradient is the slope, the the relationship between

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outcomes and what you bring to the table.

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And what we're seeing in the United States is those,

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those slopes or gradients are increasingly steep.

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So small differences in total capital can result

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in large differences in outcomes.

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I would say for economists

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who typically study these questions,

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intergenerational mobility refers to the possibility

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that someone can rise from one socioeconomic

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status, level to another.

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Uh, whereas,

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it might conversely be that someone grow

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who grows up in a higher socioeconomic status, falls

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through the bottom,

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and falls, you know, down into the lower ends.

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What we find, and this is not surprising, is

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that the extremes of socioeconomic status are very sticky.

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That is individuals who grow up in

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what might be termed the lowest decile,

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the lowest 10% are very unlikely to rise above the top 20

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or 30%, whereas those who are born in the top 10%,

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or even the top 20%, are unlikely to fall far below that

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because they are buffered by their family, support,

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whether it's human and social capital and and so on.

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So what we're seeing is a increasing hardening, if you will,

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of socioeconomic status inter-generationally.

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Now, intergenerational has to do with the passing on

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of advantage or disadvantage to the next generation.

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And again, what we see is a compounding of disadvantage

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and a compounding of advantage so that those parents who,

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have in fact reaped the benefits of advantage,

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are able to pass on those advantages, to their children.

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And we shouldn't neglect the fact that the parents

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of those parents, the grandparents of those children,

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are also typically in a position to confer benefits,

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to their grandchildren.

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Whereas for children, who grow up in, again,

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in impoverished or problematic neighborhoods

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and problematic families,

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that disadvantage passes on to them.

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And again, they are appear to be much less likely

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to rise above their, their, they're,

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birth standards in order to, achieve

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what we might call the American dream middle class,

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upper middle class life.

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And again, these are not, rules human in stone,

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but they are statistically what we find in,

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in looking at, generation to generation.

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I wish we had a very simple answer, but we don't.

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Um, but if you, again, pardon the alliteration, we, we argue

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that there are sort of three key factors.

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Um, one has to be systematic, systemic, and sustained.

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And by that I mean, we mean that, we have

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to treat children with, problematic

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pathways that as we meet gates, we must be systematic

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in opening those gates for them.

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And by systematic we mean through the 18 years

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of of development.

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Uh, for example, children who are born

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to single mothers, the Nurse Family Partnership

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brings trained nurses to the expectant mother,

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helps the mother understand, what good nutrition

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for her means for her unborn child.

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And the nurse stays with that mother child duo,

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for the first 18 months.

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Mm-hmm, if that could be then followed up with,

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early head start.

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Uh, and then, pre-K that is pre-kindergarten,

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and then a problem, quality kindergarten

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and grade one, grade two, training and support.

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Then we have really positioned that child

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to develop the human social capital that he

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or she, must, must have.

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So, again, we think about

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individuals meeting certain transition points,

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and what is the, what are the resources, the family,

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and the public, if you will, society can provide

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to those children in order

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to successfully navigate those transition points.

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Uh, now systemic in this case means

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that we understand,

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and it's laid out in a number of chapters in the book,

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that what ails American in terms of lack of opportunity for

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so many of our, our children

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and young adults is not simply a, a matter

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of personal responsibility that comes into play, of course,

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but larger societal forces

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and even global forces in, in terms of, economics,

15:02.035 --> 15:04.245
globalization, et cetera, et cetera.

15:04.265 --> 15:09.005
And so we must think systemically about how to address the,

15:09.505 --> 15:12.645
the woes that that befall so many of our

15:13.245 --> 15:14.405
families in the United States.

15:14.465 --> 15:16.805
And of course this is true in United Kingdom

15:17.185 --> 15:19.645
and other western countries as well.

15:20.425 --> 15:22.555
Yeah, the third s sustainability

15:22.565 --> 15:24.075
means we've gotta keep at it.

15:24.095 --> 15:25.555
We, we, it's not a one and done.

15:25.975 --> 15:29.155
We really need to keep at it not only systematically

15:29.155 --> 15:32.515
for the individual, but sustain that over multiple cohorts

15:32.665 --> 15:35.435
because the damage that's been done over the last,

15:35.665 --> 15:36.955
certainly over the last 40

15:36.955 --> 15:41.435
or 50 years, cannot be undone in a single generation.

15:41.435 --> 15:43.715
It's something that really will be multi-generational.

15:43.975 --> 15:47.395
And I think we have enough examples

15:48.015 --> 15:50.555
of interventions that can work,

15:50.555 --> 15:51.915
and that have been sustained.

15:52.375 --> 15:56.475
Uh, for example, here in this country, there is a,

15:57.115 --> 15:59.675
a set of interventions that go under the rubric

15:59.855 --> 16:03.315
of integrated student support, which provide,

16:03.735 --> 16:07.715
as the name suggests, support for children to deal

16:07.715 --> 16:10.195
with non-academic barriers to learning, okay?

16:10.195 --> 16:13.075
Because children bring their, their home life and,

16:13.495 --> 16:15.275
and other issues with them to school.

16:15.855 --> 16:17.995
And how can we help them mitigate,

16:17.995 --> 16:19.355
how can we help the schools and the children

16:20.075 --> 16:21.715
mitigate those problems, whether they're medical,

16:21.865 --> 16:24.355
psychological, dental, social,

16:24.455 --> 16:26.035
and so on. And at the same time

16:26.065 --> 16:28.435
Provide enrichen enrichment activities

16:28.625 --> 16:30.515
that help those children,

16:31.805 --> 16:33.635
experience a life in school

16:33.735 --> 16:36.515
and outside school that is more like the kind of life

16:36.515 --> 16:38.355
that middle and upper middle class children,

16:38.895 --> 16:40.355
now experience.

16:40.615 --> 16:43.075
Of course, even in Scandinavian countries,

16:43.455 --> 16:47.035
public support can never completely,

16:47.825 --> 16:50.995
replace missing, support from family neighborhoods,

16:51.175 --> 16:53.675
but they do a much better job than we do in this country,

16:53.815 --> 16:56.395
and I think in England and the United Kingdom as well.

00:00 - It goes back to 2007. All the work that I'm gonna describe was done in collaboration with, Dr. Irwin Kirsch of the educational testing service in Princeton, New Jersey. And back in 2007, he and I and some other colleagues,

00:14 - published a small monograph called, America's Perfect Storm, in which we argued that three trends were going to lead to a very problematic situation for the United States. Those three trends were, demographic trends, with increasing proportion of non-whites, within the American population, increasing skills, gaps between, different races and ethnicities, and thirdly, changes in the job market and the kinds of skills that good jobs would require.

00:51 - And what we were able to show was that if the demographic trends, proceeded as expected, and if the skills gaps even remain constant, then the human capital available to the country, over the next 25, 30 years would be, insufficient to meet the needs of the, of the workplace. And we then decided that several years later to follow that up with a more in depth, review of the situation, and particularly with an intensive focus on the notion of opportunity, where it was, where it wasn't,

01:25 - and the implications for America going forward. Of course, opportunity has many different definitions. We chose it to mean, the pathways that allow individuals to develop the human and social capital that they will require in order to succeed in life's outcomes, whether it's work, family, or civic participation. We decided among other things that we wanted to, develop a, a more academic volume that would explore the different perspectives

01:55 - and different aspects of the problem of opportunity in America. And so we solicited, scholars in, very, in a range of different domains, including education, education history, education law, macroeconomics, labor, economics, demography, public policy, and so on. And I'm very happy to say that everyone that we approached, agreed to, participate as an author is really quite, quite, remarkable.

02:25 - And I think the volume that we produce, if I may say, is, represents really a milestone in a multidisciplinary, look at the problem of opportunity. Human capital in, in our view, represents a, a, a broad range of cognitive skills, including foundational skills like literacy and numeracy, but also what we might think of as more advanced skills such as analytics, problem solving, and so on. But it also incorporates interpersonal and interpersonal skills, which research shows are

02:58 - as important as cognitive skills in, predicting success in the workplace, in academics and in the workplace. For us, social capital, corresponds to sort of the networks of con of connections, if you will, to individuals and organizations that can provide support and advice through, your lifetime. But it also represents, the norms of behavior that govern the way in which people interact with one another and the way in which they conduct

03:30 - themselves, both in private and in public. And what we've seen over the last probably 30 or 40 years, is a tightening of the coupling, if you will, between human and social capital. 40 years ago, 50 years ago, even working class, even lower working class men, or let me just focus on men for a moment in America, had typically a fair amount of social capital through their participation in unions, in churchgoing, in social and sports clubs.

04:04 - And this provided them with the kinds of networks and norms of behavior that, corresponded in some sense to the kinds of social capital that individuals say with, college, education who are working in white collar or professional, occupations. But over the last 40, 50 years has been well documented and a wonderful book by Robert Putnam at Harvard on bowling alone, particularly white men have fallen off the wagon, so to speak, in terms of being able to,

04:35 - develop those social capital, connections, either because of the demise of unions, decline in church going, lower participation in these sorts of social clubs, and so on and so on. And they find themselves, of course, with many exceptions, increasingly lonely, without trusted friends and so on. And as has been documented by, case and Deaton, they, they are more likely to suffer from what are called the deaths of despair. At the same time, middle class

05:07 - and upper middle class, men have continued pretty much as they had two or three decades ago in terms of the kinds of activities they participated in, the social connections they maintain, their rates of marriage, childbearing, workplace connections, and so on. So there's been this really rupture, if you will, between, the two different socioeconomic classes. What's also very important then, is that as we see,

05:39 - human capital and social capital are more tightly connected, so that college now that college age, women are more likely to attend college. In fact, at this point, more likely than men, it's more likely than that. Men of college with college degrees are gonna marry women with college degrees, and together they bring their human capital and their, you know, their independent networks into, into the family home, so to speak.

06:06 - And that then benefits their children, of course. Whereas, young adults, in lower socioeconomic classes with perhaps a high school diploma, perhaps not, are more likely to, match up with one another, with a dearth of human capital, lower social capital, norms of behavior that, speak to, for example, out of, out of, wild luck childbirth, increasing rates of divorce and separation and so on. So there's been this, if you will, a broadening

06:40 - of the distribution of what we could call total capital. And at the same time as we predicted in America's Perfect Storm, there is an increasingly steep gradient between, for example, outcomes in the marketplace, in the workplace, and the human and social capital you bring to the, to the fore, so that those with more human and social capital are more likely to reap the rewards of today's economy.

07:07 - And those in the lower end of the human and social capital distribution are more likely to be suffering a dearth of success, either unemployed, underemployed, or employed in low wage, low benefit jobs. So we see this increasingly increasing polarization, if you will, of the prospects for individuals. The dynamics of opportunity, which is the title of the book is, is very complex as the 14 or so chapters, readily attest. so I just wanna focus on one aspect of it, which is

07:42 - the dynamics of opportunity as they play out in, in the life of a child from, gestation, if you will, all the way through, the high school years. And we, were very interested in trying to develop a narrative that would speak to a broad audience, not just to our fellow academics. And the, the narrative we, develop involves a framework that we call gates, gaps and gradients, if you'll pardon the alliteration. and the idea is that, as I said, human capital

08:15 - and opportunity are, are pathways and what a child meets, along those pathways are gates. Some of those gates are open, in which case the child is able to move along that pathway and accumulate the human of social capital that's age appropriate. But for others, the gates are only a jar or even entirely closed. And for those, the gates are closed, and may be poor per parenting, poor nutrition, lack

08:43 - of, housing, et cetera, et cetera. they're forced to take pathways that are less productive and less likely to yield the, as I say, the human and social capital that, that they would need as they progress. And what we see then is a dynamic, a very powerful dynamic, I'd say, between gates and gaps. And as gaps increase, those at the disadvantage meet more gates that are closed. And so the gaps widen in comparison to those children

09:15 - for whom the gates are open, and they are able to reverse those pathways, in a very productive, way. And what we then see is that by the time children reach the age of 18, say the typical end of high school in, in the United States, there are very substantial gaps between children who are born in disadvantage and those who are born in advantage. Now, that's not to say that children,

09:42 - in the lower socioeconomic groups or, or for whatever reason by themselves in problematic circumstances, can't rise above that. They have the inner resilience, the, the chance meetings and so on that propel them, to, a station above where they might expect. But, as we like to say, we shouldn't live in a society in which we expect children to be heroes in order to succeed.

10:09 - The gradient is the slope, the the relationship between outcomes and what you bring to the table. And what we're seeing in the United States is those, those slopes or gradients are increasingly steep. So small differences in total capital can result in large differences in outcomes. I would say for economists who typically study these questions, intergenerational mobility refers to the possibility that someone can rise from one socioeconomic

10:41 - status, level to another. whereas, it might conversely be that someone grow who grows up in a higher socioeconomic status, falls through the bottom, and falls, you know, down into the lower ends. What we find, and this is not surprising, is that the extremes of socioeconomic status are very sticky. That is individuals who grow up in what might be termed the lowest decile,

11:10 - the lowest 10% are very unlikely to rise above the top 20 or 30%, whereas those who are born in the top 10%, or even the top 20%, are unlikely to fall far below that because they are buffered by their family, support, whether it's human and social capital and and so on. So what we're seeing is a increasing hardening, if you will, of socioeconomic status inter-generationally. Now, intergenerational has to do with the passing on of advantage or disadvantage to the next generation. And again, what we see is a compounding of disadvantage

11:50 - and a compounding of advantage so that those parents who, have in fact reaped the benefits of advantage, are able to pass on those advantages, to their children. And we shouldn't neglect the fact that the parents of those parents, the grandparents of those children, are also typically in a position to confer benefits, to their grandchildren. Whereas for children, who grow up in, again, in impoverished or problematic neighborhoods and problematic families,

12:22 - that disadvantage passes on to them. And again, they are appear to be much less likely to rise above their, their, they're, birth standards in order to, achieve what we might call the American dream middle class, upper middle class life. And again, these are not, rules human in stone, but they are statistically what we find in, in looking at, generation to generation. I wish we had a very simple answer, but we don't.

12:54 - but if you, again, pardon the alliteration, we, we argue that there are sort of three key factors. one has to be systematic, systemic, and sustained. And by that I mean, we mean that, we have to treat children with, problematic pathways that as we meet gates, we must be systematic in opening those gates for them. And by systematic we mean through the 18 years of of development. for example, children who are born

13:30 - to single mothers, the Nurse Family Partnership brings trained nurses to the expectant mother, helps the mother understand, what good nutrition for her means for her unborn child. And the nurse stays with that mother child duo, for the first 18 months. Mm-hmm, if that could be then followed up with, early head start. and then, pre-K that is pre-kindergarten, and then a problem, quality kindergarten

14:00 - and grade one, grade two, training and support. Then we have really positioned that child to develop the human social capital that he or she, must, must have. So, again, we think about individuals meeting certain transition points, and what is the, what are the resources, the family, and the public, if you will, society can provide to those children in order to successfully navigate those transition points.

14:33 - now systemic in this case means that we understand, and it's laid out in a number of chapters in the book, that what ails American in terms of lack of opportunity for so many of our, our children and young adults is not simply a, a matter of personal responsibility that comes into play, of course, but larger societal forces and even global forces in, in terms of, economics, globalization, et cetera, et cetera.

15:04 - And so we must think systemically about how to address the, the woes that that befall so many of our families in the United States. And of course this is true in United Kingdom and other western countries as well. Yeah, the third s sustainability means we've gotta keep at it. We, we, it's not a one and done. We really need to keep at it not only systematically for the individual, but sustain that over multiple cohorts

15:32 - because the damage that's been done over the last, certainly over the last 40 or 50 years, cannot be undone in a single generation. It's something that really will be multi-generational. And I think we have enough examples of interventions that can work, and that have been sustained. for example, here in this country, there is a, a set of interventions that go under the rubric of integrated student support, which provide,

16:03 - as the name suggests, support for children to deal with non-academic barriers to learning, okay? Because children bring their, their home life and, and other issues with them to school. And how can we help them mitigate, how can we help the schools and the children mitigate those problems, whether they're medical, psychological, dental, social, and so on. And at the same time Provide enrichen enrichment activities

16:28 - that help those children, experience a life in school and outside school that is more like the kind of life that middle and upper middle class children, now experience. Of course, even in Scandinavian countries, public support can never completely, replace missing, support from family neighborhoods, but they do a much better job than we do in this country, and I think in England and the United Kingdom as well.

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