The survey also found that pessimism about economic prospects has grown significantly among blacks. Fewer than half of those polled, 44%, said they expected life to get better. Twenty years ago, 57% had said they thought life would improve.
"People are quite anxious," Kohut said. "They do not see the kind of forward momentum that blacks saw in earlier times."
One reason for the pessimism may be that the condition of the black middle class appears to be more fragile than that of whites. About 45% of black children who grow up in middle-class families will slip into a lower-income bracket in adulthood, according to a separate study on economic mobility sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts.
"Nearly half of children born to middle-class African Americans fall down to the bottom quintile [20%] as adults," said John Morton, director of the economic mobility study.
The project, which tracked more than 2,000 children from 1968 to the present, found that two-thirds of children of all races tended to earn higher incomes than their parents when measured in constant dollars, Morton said.
However, about 16% of white children and about 45% of black children were unable to match their parents' success and slipped into a lower socioeconomic bracket in adulthood.
"The good news is that the lower the child begins on the economic ladder, regardless of race, the higher the likelihood that child will surpass their parents' income as an adult," Morton said. "The bad news is that middle-income African American families appear to have tremendous difficulty passing on their middle-income status to their children."
Morton said one reason could be changing family structures.
"There is a higher prevalence of single-parent families at a time that it is increasingly important to have two salaries to maintain a standard of living," Morton said.
The Pew poll, which interviewed more than 3,000 people in September and October, had a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points. The margin was slightly higher when the attitudes of blacks, whites and Latinos were considered separately.
maura.reynolds@latimes.com
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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
Attitude shifts
In 2007, fewer than half of blacks polled expected a brighter future, and a majority blame individual failings over racial prejudice for a lack of economic progress.
Will life for blacks be better in the future?
- 1986
Better: 57%
Same: 14%
Worse: 23%
- 2007
Better: 44%
Same: 31%
Worse: 21%
Who is responsible for blacks' condition?
Blacks responsible for their own condition: 53%
Racial discrimination: 30%
Neither/both: 14%
Don't know/refused: 3%
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Source: Pew Research Center
Mark Hafer Los Angeles Times
