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I just finished watching the most recent installment of the "Up" [2] films--a series of documentary films beginning in 1964 that has followed fourteen British children from different socioeconomic backgrounds since they were seven years old. The series is based on the maxim "Give me a child until he is seven, and I will give you the man," although in this case the explicit intention was to see how British class structure perpetuates itself throughout the subjects' lives. Every seven years the filmmaker has returned to these subjects to see how their lives have changed--where they went to school, where they work, how they live--to see whether the ideas and aspirations they had for their futures came to pass (the most recent edition filmed them at 49 years old). From the age of seven, the children articulated what they believed would be their place and destiny in British society. The wealthy children had big aspirations for their careers and knew which boarding schools and universities they would go to, while the working class children, uncertain of whether to attend university, wanted to become taxi drivers, work retail, or "just walk around and see what I can find." Although as they grew older many vehemently defended what they saw as their "choices" in life, in few cases did any of the subjects end up in a different class than where they started.

As an American, it has been fascinating to watch these films on a number of levels. Certainly, the premise that social class determines your future is an alien concept to most Americans raised on the twin beliefs that America is a classless society, and that only our imaginations limit what we can become. And yet, watching the film, I had the uneasy feeling that this smug attitude was outdated. The old American truism-that if you work hard you can get ahead, no matter what circumstances you were born into-is no longer something we can take for granted as a nation. The Pew Charitable Trust's Economic Mobility Project [3] underscores this reality in a sobering study comparing mobility in America to that of other countries. Most tellingly, it reveals that while American optimism about mobility and the ability to achieve the American Dream is alive and well, in reality intergenerational mobility in America (the likelihood that you will do better than your parents) is worse than in just about any other comparable wealthy country. Indeed, it turns out the likelihood that a child will end up in the same economic position as his parents is equally low in the United States and the United Kingdom, with it taking a shocking six generations for family economic advantage to disappear in either country. Meanwhile, countries like Canada, Denmark, Finland and Norway have far more economic mobility than the U.S. These findings upend the traditional wisdom about the United States as a land of opportunity and mobility for anybody who works to achieve it. In this sense, we have more in common with the kids from the "Up" series than we would care to admit.

Of course, if there is one heartening take-away from the films, it is the reminder that life is about a lot more than income and class position. All the subjects experience the same arc to their lives-giddy optimism in their childhood, awkwardness and cynicism in their teens and early twenties; familial, career and financial turmoil and uncertainty in their late twenties and thirties; and, finally, contentment (or at least calm acquiescence) in their forties. As the subjects age, the series becomes less about class and more about what truly matters most to people's lives and their happiness-their families, satisfaction in their careers, and emotional stability. That may be cold comfort on a policy level, especially in the struggle to decrease inequality and increase mobility for all Americans, but at the very least it's an inspiring reminder of what to strive for in our personal lives.