Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"We have a new study that tried to directly answer this question. What it did was compare the income of adults during the period 1997 to 2003 to the income of those adults' parents during the period 1978 to 1980. The major result was they found that children did do better economically than their parents. Specifically, 71 percent of persons whose parents were in the bottom half of the income distribution moved up. Although the income gain was no more than 20 percent, and this gain was actually less than we have seen in past generations. The study also found that men were more upwardly mobile in terms of income than women. But the major, major finding was that those with education - more education - were the most upwardly mobile in terms of income."