CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Charlotte and Raleigh are making headway when it comes to children’s chances to move out of poverty.
Opportunity Insights, a team of researchers based at Harvard University, ranked both cities at the bottom in economic mobility among 50 largest U.S. cities in a 2014 study called "Where’s the Land of Opportunity?"
A recent Opportunity Insights’ study called Changing Opportunity ranks Charlotte third on the most improved list after analyzing data for 57 million children born between 1978 and 1992 from anonymized census and tax records.
The study found children’s outcomes are most strongly related to the parental employment rates of peers they interact with.
Jamese Ivy, who grew up in Charlotte, is part of the age group cohort the study analyzed.
The 32-year-old came from humble beginnings on the west side of the city. She’s now the interim chief impact officer at United Way of Greater Charlotte.
Earlier this year she visited with Spectrum News 1 the area she lived in growing up.
“I was raised by a single mother. I lived here with my mom and brother,” Ivy said. “I have some joy coming back here. I spent many of my years here.”
She attended schools in west Charlotte for the most part other than three years when she was bused to a school in another side of town.
These interactions impacted her journey, as the Changing Opportunity study points out.
“I was able to see how people in higher economic levels lived and what their lives looked like and was able to interact with them, which helped me to envision the life that I wanted as an adult,” Ivy said.
As an adult, higher education opened doors for her, helping her move up the income ladder.
Changing Opportunity shows low-income children in Charlotte born in 1992 like Ivy made gains in economic mobility versus low-income children born in 1978.
“I’m very happy that we have moved up. I want to encourage us to all stay the course,” Ivy said.
Among peer cities, Charlotte went from No. 50 in 2014 to No. 38 this year, receiving recognition as the third-most improved city.
“When we got that 50/50 stat in economic mobility, we decided we needed to do something about it,” Ivy said.
One of the efforts was forming Leading on Opportunity, an organization advocating for and tracking the city’s progress.
“We start by giving folks a snapshot of what’s happening here in Charlotte,” Leading on Opportunity Executive Director Sherri Chisholm said.
She celebrates the progress and acknowledges the study shows there’s no silver bullet solution to economic mobility.
“When we think about what moves economic mobility, or in plain language, what helps folks get out of poverty is to think same things we’ve always known to be true individuals. Children they need stable housing. Their parents need to be employed. They need to have quality health care and education,” Chisholm said.
Focusing on youth is one of the takeaways of Changing Opportunity. Ivy said an organization called Community in Schools helped her as a first-generation college student.
“They opened a lot of doors of me getting to college but most importantly me staying in college,” Ivy said.
She also gives a lot of credit to her mom.
“She made sure that I had the best education possible. She may not have went to college, but she made sure that I got there and had whatever I needed,” Ivy said.
Now, she’s come full circle working at United Way of Greater Charlotte helping lift neighborhoods out of poverty.
“Giving people a say in what they need to say and what's happening in their communities is one of the biggest things that we do,” Ivy said.
According to the Changing Opportunity study, Charlotte and Atlanta had similar rankings in economic mobility 10 years ago.
Charlotte also reached national average due to improved outcomes for low-income Black residents and stable outcomes for white residents. In contrast, economic mobility remained low for both groups in Atlanta.