Tom and Jeanne Elmezzi, who started a philanthropy in their name, the Thomas and Jeanne Elmezzi Private Foundation, believed in the American Dream. Tom Elmezzi immigrated with his family to the U.S. at an early age and grew up poor in Astoria. But he went on to become a well respected and successful corporate leader and businessman, who for decades handled the secret formula for one the world’s biggest brands– Pepsi. While Tom Elmezzi’s story of success and achievement is remarkable, there are similar stories among those born in the early part of the previous century. According to researchers at the Equality of Opportunity Project, from those born in the 1940s, about 90 percent of children grew up to experience higher incomes than their parents. This proportion was only 50 perfect among those born in the 1980s, changing more drastically through present decades and heavily impacted when segmented by race, class, neighborhood, college attendance and graduation.
Given that one of the core foundational values of the Elmezzi Foundation is the belief in the American Dream, a critical question we are exploring as a board and staff is how do we continue to support the American Dream in New York City, particularly for people in poverty in Long Island City and Astoria, especially in light of what the new research shows?
In exploring this question, one of the things we have learned is that the likelihood of upward economic mobility and social capital for Americans is intrinsically linked to the neighborhoods where they grow up. Colloquially, this means that in particular neighborhoods it is more difficult to achieve the concept of the “American Dream” due to circumstances that are often out of the individuals control. This idea has been discussed as a social and economic reality amongst communities, sector leaders, economists, social scientists, and in October 2018 a new online data tool called the Opportunity Atlas (see end of article for more info) that made public the data supporting this reality.
When Opportunity Atlas asked this question of “Which neighborhoods in America offer children the best chances of climbing the income ladder?” the answer was multiple insights on the potential trajectories of a child’s growth including:
1: Children’s outcomes in adulthood vary sharply across neighborhoods that are just a mile or two apart
2: Places that have good outcomes for one racial group do not always have good outcomes for others
3: Moving to a better neighborhood earlier in childhood can increase a child’s income by several thousand dollars
4: Traditional indicators of local economic success such as job growth do not always translate in greater upward mobility
5: Historical data on children’s outcomes are useful predictors of children’s prospects for upward mobility today
6: The new data uncover “opportunity bargains” – affordable neighborhoods that produce good outcomes for children
Our grantmaking is around $3 million annually and we recognize that this amount of money would barely make a dent in our target community to impact one finding, let alone all six. However, we are fortunate that through the years we have supported some amazing organizations and built long term relationships, making the commitment to dig deeper into our existing body of work towards the next logical step. Our desired impact is to focus on increasing and improving personal well-being and self-sufficiency. With this in mind, we will continue to work with our grantees to support the most vulnerable in our community. At the Elmezzi Foundation we are dedicated to achieving Tom and Jeanne’s belief that providing opportunities to those who need them the most is where the American Dream becomes a reality.
Helpful plug: Since we became aware of it we have used the Opportunity Atlas to help us research neighborhood specific information for zip codes 11101, 11102, and 11106 in Long Island City and Astoria to get in depth analysis of the communities we serve. We wanted to highlight and share this tool with our grantee partners in case it can be of help: Opportunity Atlas and Opportunity Insights.
The Opportunity Atlas is an interactive tool that uses data of nearly 20 million members of the U.S. population over the last 30 years. The project Opportunity Insights, is a non-partisan, not-for-profit institute led by economists Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren of Harvard University, John Friedman of Brown University, and Maggie Jones and Sonya Porter of the U.S. Census Bureau. It intends to translate the findings into policy that can improve the lives of Americans by finding solutions to allow individuals to rise out of poverty and achieve better life outcomes.