Results reveal that restoring economic mobility would require, in part, more equal economic redistribution. The “American Dream” promises that hard work and opportunity will lead to a better life, and that even those born to low-income families can “rise above the ranks” with sufficient effort. Despite much interest in economic mobility, however, studying it over generations remains challenging, mainly because of the lack of large, high-quality datasets in the U.S. linking children to their parents. Economic mobility fell most sharply in the industrial Midwest (e.g., Indiana, Illinois), while the smallest declines occurred in states such as Massachusetts, New York, and Montana. In contrast, when the researchers modelled the 1980s cohort with the same economic distribution seen in the 1940s, the rate of absolute mobility rose to 80%.