Analysis Of Lane Kenworthy's Hard To Make It In America

In the article “It’s Hard to Make It in America: How the United States Stopped Being the Land of Opportunity” the author Lane Kenworthy’s main purpose was to inform the audience the importance of equal opportunity for all Americans despite gender, race, or family background. Lane Kenworthy encourages readers to make the United States more equal by listening to its own history and past mistakes as well as following other countries guidelines. The viewers of this article would be reading it for educational purposes. However, the information in this article first must be evaluated to see if this is a good article for scholarly purposes.

In order to critique this article a closer evaluation of the author must be done. What gives him the authority

However, after reading it through again to evaluate all Kenworthy “facts” it seems as if he is missing a lot of sources and merely starting points without backing them up or explaining. For example, Kenworthy starts by looking at the correlation between access to opportunity and different family backgrounds. He mentions that research on this topic is minimal and that the best assessment in the United States, the panel study of income dynamics, has only been around since the late 60’s. However, right after this statement is made he goes right into telling the reader copious amounts of stats and numbers that he just stated were lacking. Kenworthy, on many accounts rambles off percentages but doesn't say where these numbers are coming from. He says that “About 88 percent of children from high-income homes grow up with married parents. That is down from 96 percent four decades ago. Meanwhile, only 41 percent of poorer children grow up in homes with married parents, down from 77 percent four decades ago.” Where is he getting these numbers? Kenworthy repeatedly gives biased opinions with no facts whatsoever. He mentions that parents with low-income don’t spend as much on enriching their children's future; summer camps, traveling, music lessons. Low-income parents read less to their children and don’t help them with schoolwork. He finishes his opinion by saying parents with low-income are “less-likely to encourage their children to aspire to high achievements in school and at work.” How does Kenworthy know this? Even if I am mistaken and this is true he still must backup his statement with explaining how he knows this and why I should know this to be