MassINC’s longstanding focus on Gateway Cities is rooted in the belief that these urban regional centers play a unique role in creating pathways to upward mobility. Over the years, we have watched with admiration as Gateway City leaders have worked tirelessly to create new opportunities for their residents. With support from the state and private philanthropy, these efforts have made a meaningful difference. But our latest research suggests that Gateway Cities are struggling to keep pace with rising income inequality.
Research links growing income inequality to greater income segregation. As the gap between high- and low-income households widens, economic sorting increases, leaving fewer mixed-income neighborhoods. This, in turn, can deepen inequality because economic mobility depends heavily on neighborhood conditions. To climb the economic ladder, children need safe streets, high-quality learning opportunities, and exposure to adults who have achieved educational and economic success. When fewer low-income children experience these conditions, economic mobility stalls and the middle class shrinks.
Last week, the MassINC Policy Center unveiled the fifth and final installment of the Massachusetts Middle Class Status Report (MCSR). The new analysis provides a sobering look at the shape of economic mobility in Massachusetts.
At the neighborhood-level, Massachusetts residents are among the most segregated by income in the United States. More concerning still, Massachusetts has experienced the nation’s largest increase in income segregation since 2020. This divide extends beyond neighborhoods and into our public schools. Only Connecticut and New Jersey have higher levels of income segregation in public education.
This latter finding should set off alarm bells in Massachusetts. After all, this is the state where Horace Mann famously pioneered the common-school movement with an explicit vision of using public education to reduce class divisions, promote social mobility, and build a more cohesive democratic society.
The apparent lack of response to the school segregation complaint filed last June by Brown’s Promise raises serious questions about whether today’s education leaders are working to live up to that vision. For Gateway City leaders, it often feels like they have been left to confront increasing inequality entirely on their own.
The data presented in the MCSR offer a clearer picture of how growing income segregation in neighborhoods and schools reduces economic mobility. The share of Massachusetts children living in neighborhoods where the presence of adults with college degrees falls below the 25th percentile nationally is growing, and these neighborhoods are almost exclusively located in Gateway Cities. Today, these low-college attainment neighborhoods are home to nearly 90,000 Gateway City children.
Massachusetts has mounted numerous initiatives to increase college access and success, but none of them have sought to improve conditions at the neighborhood level. Gateway City youth complete college at less than half the rate of their peers from other communities, and the gap is steadily growing wider as income segregation rises.
By estimating what it costs to live a middle-class lifestyle in Massachusetts today, the MCSR also gives us a clearer understanding of what this disconnect means for the future of the state’s middle class. Among Massachusetts jobs today, 92 percent of those providing enough income to support a middle-class lifestyle require a four-year college degree.
Taken together, these findings reinforce the urgency of our efforts to expand economic opportunity in Gateway Cities by creating stronger mixed-income neighborhoods through school-centered neighborhood development (SCND) and by building robust Early College programs that give students true pathways to careers in our advanced industries.
SCND is steadily gaining traction. Leaders in Springfield and Worcester are moving forward with plans to launch initiatives. Sen. DiDomenico’s legislation to help fuel these place-based initiatives was included in the Senate version of the economic development bill. With support from the United Way and others, Gateway City leaders have been actively lobbying conferees to include these provisions in the final version of the bill.
This is a strong start. However, for place-based initiatives to truly succeed, we need housing and community development finance leaders to come to the table with fresh ideas for new forms of investment that will nurture mixed-income neighborhoods and build wealth in places that still bear the scars of redlining and decades of disinvestment.
Massachusetts is also making progress on Early College. After years of slow growth, these programs are enrolling more students and providing them with the opportunity to graduate high school with more college credits. State leaders are currently crafting a plan that could lead to twice as many Gateway City students participating in Early College by the end of the decade.
Acting with urgency to give more students access to Early College is critical, but we must act with equal urgency to continuously evaluate these growing programs to ensure that they are truly delivering for students. For whatever reason, this isn’t happening at a level that is consistent with the state’s aspirations for the initiative. In the interest of students and taxpayers alike, we need accountability when it comes to both adequately resourcing these programs and producing strong returns on this state investment.
Massachusetts has had no shortage of ideas for expanding economic opportunity, but too often our efforts have operated in isolation from the places where opportunity is constrained. Reopening our gateways to the middle class will require a more deliberate focus on Gateway Cities and their neighborhoods. These communities have the institutions, leadership, and ambition to do this work. What they need is a stronger commitment from the Commonwealth to invest alongside them. The stakes extend well beyond the future of Gateway Cities. If Massachusetts wants to be a beacon of equality and the democratic principles we hold dear, it must show that it has the temerity to take on the gathering forces of income inequality and growing economic segregation.