American dream hopes

THE AMERICAN DREAM is floating off, beyond the reach of ordinary salary soldiers. Choosing to raise a family on one salary can be a gamble. And children can't assume that they'll do better than their parents.

The work-hard promise of social mobility used to be a fact. From 1947, when Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers, to 1968, when Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were killed, income inequality decreased, according to the Census Bureau. And families could expect to see their incomes rise.

But from 1968 to 1998, income inequality increased. The dream was deflated by well-known culprits: lost manufacturing jobs, expensive housing, single-parent households, the declining worth of the minimum wage, and pay lavished on highly skilled workers while the income of regular folks stagnated.

Boston no longer has the Vault, the influential group of problem-solving businessmen. But it does have newer leaders, including Milton Little and Eric Schwarz who have launched a yearlong series of discussions about developing a blueprint for improving Greater Boston. Little, president of the United Way of Massachusetts Bay, calls it the ``early stages of community mobilization." Schwarz, president of Citizen Schools, an after-school program, sums up the history, writing that ``in the period from roughly 1970 to 2001, Americans created huge wealth, but comparatively little positive social change." Now, he says, there need to be new ways ``to let opportunity flow."

The first session was held in June at the Old South Meeting House. Little says participants were enthusiastic about a public discussion dealing with issues such as housing segregation and discrimination that tend to be discussed privately. The next discussion will be in October. The resulting blueprint for change could be a simple idea -- such as put children first. The goal is to pull the American Dream back within reach in seven areas: housing, employment, diversity, justice, access to technology, education, and healthcare.

Progress in any one area promises to improve the others -- especially affordable housing, which would boost the state's economic health and attractiveness. Reforming the justice system to divert more people away from jail could have a positive impact on employability and future earnings. Similarly, giving children early access to technology and high-quality education could help them become more competitive employees. And convincing troubled teenagers that they can excel would benefit them and their communities.

It is not actually a matter of recovering a dream, but of restoring the reality of shared American prosperity.