Photo: A barn flying an American flag in a rural section of the country. Source: Center on Rural Innovation.
“Education was my passport out of poverty.”
Rudy Perpich grew up in a house beside an open mining pit. His elementary school provided him with free meals, healthcare, and his first pair of glasses. Perpich’s home possessed no running water, so every morning he woke up early to shower at his high school.
In spite of his childhood poverty, he would go on to become the longest-serving governor of Minnesota. His story is told in the 2025 biography, Perpich: A Minnesota Original. On his inauguration day in 1976, Perpich explained his path to economic and political success:
“Forty-three years ago I entered kindergarten in a small school in Minnesota’s Iron Range. At that time the nation was in the grip of the Great Depression. Millions were unemployed, many were ill-nourished or ill-housed, and few had any real economic security. As I entered class that day, my father was unemployed, and I spoke no English. And, yet, today, I have taken the oath of office as the 34th governor of Minnesota. This could not happen in many parts of the world.”
However, such inspiring American success stories have become rarer in recent years. Income and wealth inequality have risen sharply in the past four decades, while intergenerational mobility has been on the decline. In the 1980s, the top ten percent of income earners made 35% of the total income in the United States. By 2020, the top ten percent’s total income share had expanded to 45%. Many factors are responsible for the reduction in upward mobility, including unequal economic growth across classes, declining financial security, diminishing quality of public education, and reduced employment opportunities.
Recent policies by the Trump Administration have exacerbated this decline in mobility and have diminished economic opportunity. This is illustrated by funding cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid, two social programs critical to children’s long-term outcomes. In the same vein, the Trump Administration has imposed heightened barriers to students pursuing higher education by reducing college access programs, cutting federal funding, and imposing caps on student loans.
These changes to American social safety nets and higher education inhibit children and young people’s opportunities and outcomes. Perpich’s own upward mobility was made possible by a public education system that provided for his basic needs. In addition, the G.I. Bill offered financial assistance to attend college and dental school. Given that social safety nets are under pressure today, American children face many challenges on their journey through adolescence in search of upward mobility.
Childhood Stability
Under Trump Administration 2.0, SNAP faces significant threats. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed in July of 2025, directed a $186 billion reduction in SNAP benefits over the next ten years. SNAP is not only critical to maintaining stability for many American families in the short-run, but it also improves economic outcomes for the children of these families. According to the Urban Institute, SNAP benefits reduce children’s likelihood of being held back in school and are associated with greater human capital, financial stability, and life expectancy in adulthood.
In Minnesota, the federal government scrutinized and attempted to freeze all SNAP benefits until the state could confirm the eligibility of 100,000 recipients via in-person interviews. This move followed recent fraud concerns in Minnesota regarding its public assistance programs. The state’s attorney general blocked this measure with a preliminary injunction.
Fatima Aden, a junior at the University of Minnesota, was elected last month to serve as Student Body President. As a Minnesota native and a policy advocate for SNAP, Aden spoke to the importance of the program. “I grew up on SNAP benefits. I come from a large family—seven [kids], and then my mom and dad, so nine of us total . . . I truly do believe [SNAP] impacts performance in school,” Aden noted. “Making ends meet is something that does affect children because you can see your mom and dad in the kitchen, stressing over making ends meet.”
The Minnesota government has taken measures to mitigate the effects of federal rollbacks of SNAP. In October, Governor Walz allocated $4 million to support food shelves in response to a $73 million shortage in SNAP funding due to the government shutdown. According to Aden, the University of Minnesota now provides one free swipe per day to students enrolled in the meal plan and has created a food pantry to provide free food options. However, these measures fall short of guaranteeing food security at the university, much less for the whole state.
Of course, food insecurity and its consequences span far beyond Minnesota. America’s rural regions are often those most in need of SNAP and Medicaid. Royce Haynes ‘27, a Missouri native and president of the Rural Students Alliance at Yale, also commented on the cuts to SNAP during the government shutdown.
“These are people who rely on [SNAP],” said Haynes. “The government has, like it or not, promised them these things . . . When that check doesn’t show up, what do you do if you have young children?”
In response to the federal government’s shortcomings, Haynes recalled the resilience of rural communities. Like the University of Minnesota, his hometown’s school district established a food pantry in its middle school parking lot where community members could donate non-perishable food.
“It’s been heartening to see how rural communities come together,” said Haynes. “But I do think [this current situation is] destabilizing, because you can’t rely on what the government is providing you.”
Similarly, Medicaid matters to childhood wellbeing and economic opportunity. Rourke O’Brien, Associate Professor of Sociology at Yale, and Cassandra Robertson found that mothers’ access to Medicaid during pregnancies and their children’s first year of life improves intergenerational mobility. Likewise, children enrolled in Medicaid are less likely to miss school and are more likely to graduate high school, leading to higher wage earnings in adulthood.
Haynes echoed a similar sentiment to Aden concerning rural community members. The reliance on publicly provided healthcare, like that through the Affordable Health Act, makes the impact of Trump’s cuts much more felt. “Oftentimes, you work for a small business, you work on a farm where it’s very hard to find [health] insurance,” he described. “You don’t have a massive company that has enough people to insure, where premiums can stay somewhat low. Right now, though, we have this uncertainty of, is my healthcare going to go up three times over the course of a year? I thought it was gonna be fine. I thought they were going to renew these subsidies. And now, I’m looking, and I’m lost.”
In short, food and health care security are critical to the foundation of life success. Social programs like SNAP and Medicaid can lift children out of poverty, unlocking their full potential as they meaningfully engage in education and society.
College and Beyond
But children’s paths to good outcomes do not end with full stomachs and healthy bodies. Intergenerational mobility, for many, entails higher education, a cornerstone of the conventional American Dream. Rudy Perpich’s mother wanted her sons to attend college and graduate school. She, like many parents, viewed education as the key to economic opportunity.
The Trump Administration’s attempts to curtail federal funding for college access programs and universities have complicated this next step to realizing the American Dream.
Recent cuts to TRIO further limit lower-income students’ access to higher education. TRIO encompasses a set of federally funded programs that coach underserved students in postsecondary enrollment. One such TRIO program is Upward Bound, which primarily supports low-income, first-generation high school students applying to college. In 2025, the administration proposed $163 billion worth of funding cuts to non-defense programs, threatening the elimination of TRIO. Congress has funded TRIO for the 2026 fiscal year, but not before the administration froze $660 million of funding last September and canceled 120 TRIO programs.
Mira Debs is a Professor of Sociology at Yale, having served as the director of the Yale Education Studies program from 2017 to 2025. Debs explained the implications of cuts to TRIO.
“We know that when you have a really complicated process, it requires students [to] have a quite extensive background knowledge that some families have in spades and other families really don’t have,” said Debs. “And admissions offices take some of that background context into account. But programs like TRIO and Upward Bound are really critical for supporting students from low-income backgrounds in helping them to navigate what the college admission process is like.”
Additionally, students of lower socioeconomic status are effectively barred from these institutions as higher education becomes increasingly expensive. While elite private universities have often dominated the headlines concerning federal funding, this problem is not unique to the Ivy League.
Jennifer Pierce is a Professor Emerita in the Department of American Studies at the University of Minnesota. In an email interview with The Politic, she outlined what the new administration has meant for students.
“The University of Minnesota has been deeply and negatively impacted by the current federal government and Trump’s executive orders,” wrote Pierce. “Last spring, the UMN lost approximately 22 million dollars in federal grants. The loss in revenue from grants as well as the uncertainty of future funding led UMN President Cunningham to devise a new budget in July that raised tuition by seven percent to offset some of those losses. This is the highest increase I’ve witnessed in over 30 years at the University.”
Pierce continued writing to describe the university’s goal of educating Minnesotans. “[President Cunningham] also asked department chairs to implement seven percent cuts in departments and simultaneously increased funding for administrators,” described Pierce. “None of these changes are good for faculty or students. We are a public university and our mission is to serve students across our state. Increases in tuition always hurt students at lower and middle-income levels. And, that’s precisely what happened.”
These problems for higher education are likewise apparent at the graduate level, as universities such as Yale have reduced graduate admissions given the endowment tax. Thus, the number of individuals able to pursue graduate degrees will decrease in absolute terms. In addition, new limits on federal loans will change who, exactly, is able to pursue advanced degrees. In July of 2025, the Trump Administration also passed a law to limit federal loans to $100,000 and $200,000 worth of lifetime borrowing for graduate and professional (e.g., law and medical) students, respectively.
Fish Stark ‘17 is the Executive Director of the American Humanist Association, a non-profit organization that advocates for the protection of civil liberties and secularism in government. He also possesses a wealth of experience in education policy and explained the significance of federal loans for those of lower income.
“Where in this country can you get, without a scholarship at a decent school, a law degree for under $200,000, including three years of living costs?” asked Stark. “[That] makes it next to impossible for low-income students who don’t have family wealth and who don’t have years of high earnings to be able to access those things. And if it makes it next to impossible for low-income students, it makes it a whole hell of a lot harder for middle-class students.”
This federal loan policy disproportionately impacts working-class and middle-class students, as they are the ones who must borrow to pursue advanced degrees.
“And functionally, what you’re doing is saying [that] these elite professions like law and medicine that require six-figure loan debt are only going to be accessible to people who are either incredibly wealthy or hit a random stroke of luck in some other way, and you’re gonna take away one more tool for people to have basic [upward] mobility,” Stark continued.
Unsurprisingly, a child is two times more likely than members of the general public to have the same job as that child’s parent. When it comes to lawyers, however, children with a dad who practices law are 27 times more likely to become lawyers compared to members of the general public, according to the University of Chicago’s General Social Survey. The Trump Administration’s restrictions on advanced education can exacerbate this trend.
Haynes added his perspective from rural America.
“[Fewer] rural students are going to go to professional schools, because they simply realize that paying 30% interest rates is not feasible for their economic future. No matter how much money I make [after] law school, I will never be able to pay that off,” said Haynes. “You’ll just see a decrease [in] socioeconomic diversity in law school.”
At his second gubernatorial inauguration in 1983, Rudy Perpich called for major investment in Minnesota schools’ science and foreign language programs. He aspired to make Minnesota what he called the “brainpower state,” fortifying its public schools and universities in order to give every child the opportunity for a great life.
Communities such as those in Missouri and at the University of Minnesota have come together in the face of the Trump Administration’s offensive on social safety nets. However, this work falls short of what the government could provide to its citizens and hurts the students involved.
Aden reflected on how student life has changed under the Trump Administration, speaking to students’ diminished trust in government. “In regards to the social safety network . . . it’s hard being a student right now, especially a student leader, worrying about Trump and his federal attacks on everything that we care about,” Aden said. “It’s impacting our social safety and trust that we have, not only in our government, but also in the university leaders and policymakers.”
Stories like Rudy Perpich’s are becoming increasingly rare. Young people across America hope to achieve a higher socioeconomic status than their parents, but they often find themselves stuck at the bottom. As the Trump administration continues to diminish social safety nets, a disheartening question emerges: is the American Dream of upward mobility still possible, or just a memory of the past?