Translating Evidence into Impact: A Scoping Review on Economic Mobility

Economic mobility (“mobility”) refers to how a person’s economic well-being changes over time and is shaped by cross-sector pathways spanning workforce, education, health, housing, and infrastructure that enable opportunities. Many programs frequently operationalize mobility narrowly (income/employment) rather than cross-sector pathways spanning workforce, education, health, housing, and infrastructure. In addition to fragmented conceptual understanding, there is limited focus on how to define and assess mobility in partnership with communities most directly affected or with state and local representatives involved in mobility initiatives. This scoping review will examine the current state of the field on economic mobility to synthesize what works for mobility, for whom, and under what conditions. Using a-priori domain areas, the review will focus on conceptualizing economic mobility across five levers: (1) place-based strategies, (2) workforce pathways, (3) housing stability, (4) early childhood supports, and (5) digital access.