I'm going to defend Cetty Chetty, even though I've been skeptical of some of his findings. He's a very outspoken advocate for teaching economics as a form of empirical work rather than an art. But when he's sitting there on the stump in HUD with a bunch of people willing to hand out huge sums of money then you're going to find a very different person.
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.