How The Widening Socioeconomic Gap Hurts Our Kids.
ZAKARIA: Is the American dream dead? Well, my next guest says that even if it isn't dead, it is certainly in crisis. And he should know. Robert Putnam was honored by President Obama with the nation's highest humanities medal for deepening our understanding of community in America. He has a ground-breaking new book called "Our Kids." In it, he compares the opportunities that his graduating high school class had in 1959 in Port Clinton, Ohio to kids at the same school today. The results are disheartening. Robert Putnam, a pleasure to have you on.</s>ROBERT PUTNAM, AUTHOR, "OUR KIDS": Thanks, Fareed. It's good to be here.</s>ZAKARIA: So first talk about that...that class. 1959. What was life like for you in Ohio?</s>PUTNAM: Well, and I have to say, this is not just by golden glow rememberings of it. We've gone back and interviewed all the surviving members of my class and we've looked deeply at Port Clinton's history. It was a period in which there were surprisingly few class barriers in Port Clinton. There were barriers of race and barriers of gender, but class barriers almost didn't exist. And about 80 percent of the kids in my high school graduating class from Port Clinton, from both sides of the tracks, did better than their own parents. Better economically and better educationally.</s>ZAKARIA: So now take us to what would a graduating class in Port Clinton look like today?</s>PUTNAM: Port Clinton has been dramatically changed. Part of the town has been devastated by Rust Belt problems, and so there are a lot of kids now, very poor kids from broken homes whose parents thought they might get a job in one of the factories, but the factories are all gone. So those kids are living in serious poverty. But meanwhile, right along the shore, in Port Clinton, they've got a lovely site on Lake Erie, there's now an who -- a new gated community about 20 miles long and about 150 yards deep of million-dollar mansions. So if you go to the Port Clinton high school now and look in the parking lot, next to each other, parked in the parking lot, are BMW convertibles driven there by kids whose dads live on the -- in the mansions and junkers, jalopies in which the kids live because they're homeless. That kind of unbelievable contrast in -- between rich kids and poor kids is -- is new and it's not only new in Port Clinton. It's new, really, nationwide. These -- these larger social trends that we're familiar with, the growing gap between rich people and poor people, the growing segregation of America along class lines, those come down and affect the lives and the opportunities and the resources available to kids.</s>ZAKARIA: And the trajectory for kids, disadvantaged kids now, is so bad, because they start out at this disadvantage and then every time they stumble, that disadvantage deepens.</s>PUTNAM: That's exactly right. In the book, "Our Kids," we've got a whole series of what we call scissor scraps, scraps that look like this, in which things are getting better for kids coming from affluent homes and getting worse for kids coming from -- from poor homes. It's -- you -- there's a -- there's a gap that we call the goodnight moon gap, which is how much time parents spend reading to their kids. A growing gap. There didn't used to be any gap between classes in terms of how much time their parents read to them. Now there is. There's a summer camp gap that is how much time parents -- how much money parents are able to spend on their kids for summer camp or piano lessons or, you know, all that sort of thing. A huge gap now. Seven times as much money spent on the average rich kid as on the average poor kid. Gaps in terms of quality of schooling, gaps in terms of church attendance. All of those growing gaps are...</s>ZAKARIA: And -- and that's what explains the fact that, you know, social mobility in America is so low, because if you're on the bottom end of that scissor graph, you just can't make it up.</s>PUTNAM: Absolutely right. You can see the final result of this in terms of graduating from college, getting the degree that is the necessary credential nowadays. Really interesting studies have been done comparing how important your own test scores, your own intellectual ability is and how important your parents' income is.</s>ZAKARIA: And?</s>PUTNAM: So it turns out now, smart poor kids, high test scores, but low parental income, are less likely to graduate from college than dumb rich kids; that is, kids who are lower scorers, but their parents have money. That, Fareed, violates the fundamental notion of what the American dream is. You shouldn't -- your chances in life shouldn't depend upon your parents' income, they should depend upon how hard you work.</s>ZAKARIA: And what can we do? What are the solutions?</s>PUTNAM: There -- there are some big things we can do. For example, universal early childhood education is -- we know that that works. We know it works especially for -- for poor kids. It's not yet, despite the debate about the president's proposals here, it's not yet a red/blue issue, because the most impressive early childhood education program in America is in Oklahoma, one of the reddest of states. So I'm trying to avoid making that become a -- a political issue, because it isn't right now. We -- the facts are that they would help. The other big things that would help, of course, is if we could end this 30 year stagnation of wages for -- for -- that is affect the working class. But there are also smaller things not quite as powerful in the long run but -- but doable right now. For example, instituting pay for play for high school activities, that is, nowadays, if you want to play in extracurricular activities, your parents have got to pay about $400 a term. We know that extracurricular activities have a payoff down the road because employers are willing to pay more for people who've learned those soft skills. So now to charge people, kids, to take part in those activities has had the inevitable consequence that poor kids are dropping out of band and chorus and football and French club, to their detriment. And that is self-inflicted. This is not a zero sum game. It's not like if we help poor kids, it's going to hurt my grandchildren. On the contrary. What we know is my grandchildren are going to be better off if we help all the kids, because the country is going to grow faster, we're going to be using everybody's minds, not just the rich kids' minds, we're going to be not having to pay for the criminal justice costs and the -- and the health costs and so on. This is a -- an easy -- ought to be an easy kid -- easy case. Everybody would be better -- better off if we just invested more of our own love and attention, mentoring, for example, and also of our country's resources in these poor kids.</s>ZAKARIA: Best of luck, Robert Putnam.</s>PUTNAM: Thank you very much, Fareed.</s>ZAKARIA: A pleasure to have you on.</s>ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, drones have become very good at one thing: killing human beings. But can you envision a time when they might save lives in addition to ending them? That day is here. I'll explain when we come back.