Flags flutter in a warm breeze a people cross a bridge at EpicCentral in Grand Prairie, Monday, June 8, 2026.
Smiley N. Pool/The Dallas Morning News
This Fourth of July, the United States turns 250, a milestone birthday for a nation built on the promise of equity and the pursuit of happiness, ideals that have long shaped the “American Dream.”
Yet, achieving the dream still largely depends on family income, race or ethnicity and a child’s neighborhood environment, according to research from Opportunity Insights, an economic mobility center at Harvard University.
The organization focuses its research on the economic barriers in “the fading American Dream,” motivated by one striking statistic: Over 90% of children born in the 1940s earned more than their parents. Today, only half of those born in the ‘80s and ‘90s can do the same.
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North Texas, despite its rapid growth, is no exception, according to the group’s Opportunity Atlas, which shows statistics of economic mobility at a granular level across generations.
Related: Here’s how the path to the American Dream looks in North Texas on America’s 250th birthday
Based on a collaboration with researchers at the U.S. Census Bureau, the Atlas shows upward mobility varies regionally and from one neighborhood to the next, and is largely influenced by childhood environments.
North Texas children, the research shows, have better access to financial success if they grow up in areas with less poverty, which mirrors patterns of racial segregation in the region.
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“The American Dream is one of self-determination, of financial and general independence,” said Ajamu Loving, an associate professor of finance at University of North Texas at Dallas. “And in order to have self-determination, you need to have the resources.”
Of course, there’s so much more in terms of freedom of speech, freedom of religion and the freedom of movement, he said. “But in terms of what we’re looking at with respect to economic growth in North Texas, that’s most apropos.”
Income
Across racial and ethnic groups, incomes have grown substantially in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area from 2010 to 2024, according to a News analysis of recently released census data. The News is using a period of 15 years to measure changes over a generation.
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While Hispanic median household incomes grew fastest, Hispanic residents still earned nearly $14,500 less than the metro’s median household income of about $92,700. For Black families, the median wage gap stood even wider at more than $26,000.
White non-Hispanic median household incomes increased the slowest, generally a little more than 60%, yet as a group, white households earn over $14,500 more than the median income.
Loving characterized these gaps in growth and current income as a “catching up” in income.
“If you’re already at the highest position, then you’re likely to experience lower increases over time,” Loving said. He added the trends “bode well” for North Texas.
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“Positive increases among these traditionally marginalized groups and excess of what we see for the majority group is an indication that we’re moving towards equality within the region.”
Asians, comprising the smallest share of the North Texas population among large racial and ethnic groups, recorded the most gains in income and homeownership over a generation. Despite owning 9% of homes in D-FW in 2024, their financial growth places them in the same bracket as white residents for upward mobility.
Homeownership
Between 2010 and 2024, homeownership rates – a key driver of wealth and capital – decreased by more than two percentage points among Black residents in the D-FW.
This was especially pronounced in Collin County where Black homeownership dropped more than eight percentage points – higher than the state average decrease of four percentage points. Denton County to the west, meanwhile, saw a marginal percentage-point increase in Black homeowners.
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White homeownership also recorded a marginal decline of less than a percentage point in the region, though a majority of homes in North Texas are white-owned. A third of homes are owned by Black and Hispanic residents combined.
During the 1930s and 40s, the government actively encouraged the creation of the middle class, said Mechele Dickerson, professor at the University of Texas School of Law, and author of The Middle Class New Deal.
“But all of the policies that were in place that helped lower and middle income families explicitly excluded people of color,” she said.
The introduction of discriminatory housing policies such as redlining prevented people of color from owning homes and building generational wealth, and the effects linger today. Black and Hispanic homeownership rates improved somewhat in the early 2000s, but the 2008 financial crisis led to great losses, she said. The second blow came during the COVID pandemic.
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While foreclosures remained low, so did interest rates initially, allowing those with wealth to either buy a second home or a bigger home.
“So we saw the gap expand again after COVID,” Dickerson said. “Not because of government policies, but because the people that were able to get low interest rate mortgage products were high-income and disproportionately white.”
The Opportunity Atlas for the North Texas region highlights the struggle for upward mobility in non-white majority neighborhoods in southern Dallas. “If you’re growing up in South Dallas, these outcomes are much different — $20,000 or so on average in household income — than if you’re growing up in parts of North Dallas,” a member of the research team told The News.
Education
The lack of access to good housing ripples over generations, Dickerson said. If you couldn’t afford to live in those nicer neighborhoods, your kids were going to lower performing schools, which meant they would be less prepared for college.
That is evident in the makeup of higher-educational attainment for different demographic groups. About a third of Black adults and about 20% of Hispanic residents hold degrees.
But these communities have made significant strides in educational attainment since 2010. While college graduation rates increased across demographic groups, Black residents recorded one of the greatest surges in the share of adults with bachelor’s or master’s degrees. Though Hispanic residents have the lowest share of adults with a college or higher education at 20% — that share has doubled over 15 years in D-FW.
Now, experts are wondering how AI will change the role of education in the American Dream.
Just as the internet was a game changer in the ‘90s, artificial intelligence is changing the landscape of employment now, Loving said. Current wealth will determine the opportunity to access these resources more effectively, too.
“So the people who are highly educated, who have the most financial resources, probably are going to have the time and ability to access these technologies more effectively than people who are really chasing to make a dollar right now,” he said.
The American Dream has always been integrally linked with the U.S. middle class, Dickerson said. Lower and middle income families in this country want to be able to attain the stability and security of the middle class.
They want a permanent job with healthcare benefits where they don’t have to worry about layoffs, she said.
She noted that college graduates, who are more likely to be employed in a 9-to-5 job with healthcare benefits, are disproportionately white (53%). In the D-FW, as of 2024, Black and Hispanic residents make up about a quarter of higher educated adults and account for lowest shares of adults with any kind of health insurance, at 17% and 25% respectively.
“If you don’t have a full-time job, you’re not as likely to have health insurance, and one of the primary drivers for bankruptcy is medical debt,” she said. “So, health insurance is not just about “we want humans to be healthy”, it puts us in a society where if you’re lucky enough to have a job with good health insurance, you’ll be OK. If you’re not, you may have to file for bankruptcy to get rid of it.”
Household income in and of itself is extremely predictive of the long-term health outcomes in communities, according to the Opportunity Insights research team. The organization’s research showed a life expectancy gap of 10 to 15 years between the lowest income and highest income individuals in the U.S. In Dallas, as of 2025, the life expectancy gap between South Dallas vs. the Highland Park area is as much as 17 years — a condition that has been ongoing for many decades.
Even in the case of recent significant neighborhood changes, such as the arrival of a major employer in the area or the construction of Halperin Park over the I-35 to connect formerly separated Black neighborhoods, researchers say they would have to wait for years to measure its generational impact in a concrete way.
This reporting is part of the Future of North Texas, a community-funded journalism initiative supported by the Commit Partnership, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, the Dallas Mavericks, the Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Lisa and Charles Siegel, the McCune-Losinger Family Fund, The Meadows Foundation, the Perot Foundation, the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas and the University of Texas at Dallas. The News retains full editorial control of this coverage.