"America has no higher rate of social mobility than medieval England, Or pre-industrial Sweden," he said. "That's the most difficult part of talking about social mobility is because it is shattering people's dreams."
Gregory Clark crunched the numbers in the U.S. from the past 100 years. His data shows the so-called American Dream—where hard work leads to more opportunities—is an illusion in the United States, and that social mobility here is no different than in the rest of the world.
"The status of your children, your grandchildren, your great grandchildren your great-great grandchildren will be quite closely related to your average status now," he said.
http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2014/11/26/uc-davis-economics-professor-there-is-no-american-dream/
Even worse, since we are now just getting a really good start after basically a seven year downturn from the Great Recession and it's aftermath, it might be said that the next generation may actually slip below their parents economic standing. The recession took a huge amount of wealth and redistributed it to those that didn't need it to begin with, and it isn't coming back any time soon.