America is becoming increasingly polarized between its upper and lower classes, and the resulting “opportunity gap” is adversely affecting our children and jeopardizing America’s future, says Robert Putnam, a noted Harvard professor who spoke last week at Drake University.

Putnam, author of the best-selling book, “Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis,” has drawn on his personal experiences growing up in the small Midwestern town of Port Clinton, Ohio, to fuel his groundbreaking research into income inequality. The Peter and Isabel Makin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard, Putnam has advised President Barack Obama as well as former President George W. Bush and other politicians on income inequality issues.
 

Increasingly, there are two Americas and two of each American city — divided by class. What we used to call the working class has disappeared as that family structure has collapsed, he said.

“We’re more likely to live in either entirely rich neighborhoods or entirely poor neighborhoods, and there are fewer mixed neighborhoods,” he told the crowd of several hundred last week at the event, which was presented by the Harkin Institute. “As a consequence, our kids are less likely to go to school with kids of other backgrounds, either going to school with other rich kids or other poor kids.”

As a result, “increasingly, the poor kids in America are alone and isolated, and they don’t trust anybody — and literally, they can’t trust anybody,” he said.

Continue reading to learn more about Putnam’s research that documents the widening gap between the wealthy and poor in a number of communities across the United States, and see some of his policy recommendations. Full Insider Article >>>

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