Building Pathways to Prosperity — Changing What Holds Us Back

In thinking about this month’s issue focusing on wealth and finance, I returned to the authors and ideas that have shaped how I think about pathways to prosperity and how we can connect the dots to create stronger communities. Reviewing my go-to sources, including Jonathan Kozol, Robert Putnam, and Raj Chetty, I was reminded that the lack of access to wealth and mobility is tied to systemic barriers and that Columbia needs the whole community to be responsible for creating opportunities for everyone.  

To get a better idea of the challenges and opportunities in our community, I looked at the city of Columbia’s annual report, published in August. The report highlights our community’s well-being, but some trends remain troubling. For example, while the overall poverty rate has decreased by 1.9 percent in the last four years, from 22 percent to 20 percent, our Black community faces a 36 percent poverty rate. The report also shows how child poverty dropped overall to 13 percent but remains exceptionally high for Black children, with nearly 44 percent living in poverty.  

Employment data tells a similar story. Columbia’s unemployment rate in 2023 was 3.4 percent, matching Missouri’s rate and staying below the national average. But these numbers conceal troubling inequities, with Black unemployment 5.3 percentage points higher.  

These latest numbers are a part of a long-term trend and suggest our systems are not creating enough opportunity. To put it plainly, if the current ways of doing something aren’t working, why are we continuing to use them?  

How do we address these trends and create transformational action? As Jonathan Kozol has long argued, inequities in education are among the strongest drivers of generational poverty. Columbia’s child poverty rate of 13 percent — 44 percent for Black children — underscores the urgency. Educational efforts to help children in poverty are among the strongest immediate and long-term strategies to break the cycle. We need new ways to support our kids both inside and outside of the classroom.  

Another example of how we can address these issues is through creating greater employment opportunities. The city’s annual report references the efforts of its CARE (Career Awareness Related Experience) program, which pays the wages of participants and places them in summer jobs with local businesses. CARE connects youth to work opportunities and career exposure, building both income and social capital. Despite a more than $100,000 increase in city funding, in 2024 the program had far more applicants than the city could afford to place, thanks to rising costs. Something — at least additional funding to cover minimum wage increases — is missing.  

Raj Chetty’s research at Harvard shows that youth who gain exposure to meaningful work and new networks have a far greater chance of achieving upward mobility as adults. If we want to address the poverty and unemployment statistics referenced above, this is one of the strongest ways to do it. However, it’s not the city’s sole responsibility to make it happen. We need a new approach to how we create pathways to employment for our youth.  

I finally looked to one of my favorite researchers, Robert Putnam, for guidance on how we can look at data and critically address the challenges before us. Putnam argues that “social capital embodied in norms and networks … seems to be a precondition for economic development.” His research shows that a community’s strength depends on the depth of its social capital: the bonds of trust, reciprocity, and shared purpose that tie people together. 

Here in Columbia, building that social capital requires more than government programs. It calls for the engagement of businesses, neighborhoods, faith groups, and residents — in short, all of us.  

Those of us with privilege, whether financial, social, or positional, have a responsibility to help create opportunities for others. With this month’s issue focusing on wealth, I believe we should adopt a sense of local responsibility, an enlightened form of noblesse oblige — to leverage our wealth and work collaboratively to address these complex challenges together. The city’s annual report should not be read as just numbers on a page, but as a call to action to change what holds us back. How will we do more with our individual and community wealth to address these complex issues and build pathways to prosperity for all?