The Labor Leisure Trade-Off

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With entitlements and with this whole sense, we're slowing eroding this ability to sort of operate in an autonomous fashion. Even the most destitute welfare client would be take pride in saying, look, see, I made this, I improved my room, I have this window, my house is a much nicer place. So I think most people want that sense of achievement. And so we really are building this dependency state.

Economist and Nobel Laureate James Heckman of the University of Chicago talks about inequality and economic mobility with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Drawing on research on inequality in Denmark with Rasmus Landerso, Heckman argues that despite the efforts of the Danish welfare state to provide equal access to education, there is little difference in economic mobility between the United States and Denmark. The conversation includes a general discussion of economic mobility in the United States along with a critique of Chetty and others' work on the power of neighborhood to determine one's economic destiny.