Boosting Mobility and Advancing Equity Through Systems Change

As local leaders seek to substantially boost upward mobility from poverty, they increasingly recognize the need to center an approach that directly engages with the sources of deep-seeded disparities. By pursuing systems change, practitioners can design programs and policies that meaningfully address the root causes of long-standing inequities rather than just ameliorate their effects. This brief articulates the importance of systems change, provides examples of how programmatic approaches to boosting mobility from poverty have proved insufficient, and recommends the types of measures that local policymakers can use to track progress on comprehensive systems change.