CLEVELAND, Ohio - If Jowan Smith's life had followed statistical predictions, by her mid-30s she would have made roughly $24,000 a year.
The former Hough Avenue resident did much better than that, and so have many other black women, in Cleveland and across the country.
Few Americans who were born poor or black in the late 1970s or early 1980s did better, economically, than their parents, according to Opportunity Insights, a policy and research collaborative studying mobility at the neighborhood level.
But black women who grew up in poor or middle-class homes during that era did somewhat better than white women who grew up in similar circumstances, and considerably better than black men.
By the time they reached their mid-30s, black women born and raised in the Cleveland area made virtually the same individual incomes as white women who got the same start in life. White men still made the most. (The gap for household incomes was larger, likely because white women more often married.)
Examining the neighborhoods where the black women who made gains grew up might lead to some useful insights into what supported their success and how it can be replicated, the economists say.
Smith's story offers several reasons for doing better than statistical studies predicted she would.
Smith and her two siblings were raised by a single mother who worked hard and made decent money assembling aerospace parts in a factory, until it shuttered in the late 1990s.
"It was tight for us," Smith said.
Her mother set an example. She worked hard, came home and put food on the table. But she didn't have much time to talk about careers with her children.
Not knowing the possibilities helps trap some kids in poverty. Smith credits a mentor, a Cleveland Clinic doctor she met through a program at her high school, for opening up her options and encouraging her take college classes at what was then David N. Meyers College.
There her career counselor made a resume of her talents and skills, including some she never thought of as being job related, and sent it to a local radio station. She landed an internship and left college after her freshman year to work full time. That job led to another one where she traveled and worked with record labels.
Smith returned to Cleveland, and to Hough, about a decade later, after she was diagnosed with the autoimmune disease lupus. She decided to go back to college to study business administration, using loans and financial aid to pay for it. She graduated in 2008.
Smith then landed a job with Cuyahoga County as a benefits caseworker. Her starting salary was more than $30,000 a year and her pay climbed as she got raises.
In that job, Smith often saw families grappling with inter-generational poverty. Many didn't seem to know how to change that.
"I would see cases where you have five generations through the system," she said. "I was like 'how do we break the cycle before they get here?'"
Last year, Smith left the county to start Getting Our Babies to College 101, an organization that helps parents plan to get their children into a college or technical school.
Jowan Smith leads a college preparation workshop for families this year.
Smith, a single mom, chose to walk away from a safe and comfortable income to become an entrepreneur.
It was a risk, but she'd just worked hard getting her own daughter into college, filling out paperwork, sifting through scholarship opportunities, weighing academics and athletics.
Smith wanted to share what she learned with other parents -- and how good it felt to make it happen.
"I'm trying to break the generational cycle where parents are now empowered," she said. "Where they really don't know what they can do to help their child get into the right college or career."
Those barriers can seem immense to some parents, she said. Even more so if they have daily struggles to pay bills and put food on the table.
"Sometimes it's pride," Smith said. "People don't know how to navigate the system or think the school will do it."
One proof of the possibilities is her own children.
When they were younger, she moved to Lakewood, even though it wasn't diverse, to get them into a better school system. It was a big help for her daughter, who was diagnosed with dyslexia, she said.
The Opportunity Insights data showed that when kids moved to better neighborhoods at an early age it improved their chances of earning more as adults. The moves also decrease the chances of teen birth and incarceration.
The lesson isn't necessarily that the best solution is for poorer children to move, the researchers say, but to study the areas that produced the better results, so they can be intentionally replicated.
For high school, Smith's children returned to Cleveland but took advantage of new specialized schools.
Smith's daughter, Tahneye, now is a junior at Thiel College, a small liberal arts school in Pennsylvania.
Her son, Trayvon Porter, is a junior at her alma mater, John Hay, in its School of Science and Medicine. A basketball player who wears size 17 shoes, Trayvon, she says, is a "gentle giant" who has a passion for chess and has already been to multiple universities. He plans to study biomedical engineering.
Smith, who consults with families individually and in workshops at schools and around the community, has found ways to involve more fathers, including some who are incarcerated.
The presence fathers in a neighborhood, even if not in an individual home, seems to matter when it comes to what a child might earn when they grow up, according to previous research based on the Opportunity Insights data. Odds of success are drastically reduced in areas with high incarceration.
It was a prison warden who challenged Smith to find a way to include those fathers.
"It was never even on my radar," Smith said. "I just didn't think that that parent would be useful."
Now, she coaches incarcerated fathers to use visits and phone calls to talk to their kids about college or career plans.
At this point, Smith is only able to measure progress one family at a time. Since February 2017, she's helped almost 200 families.
But she can see some generational changes afoot.
"A lot of people from the neighborhood where I grew up, we didn't talk about college. We didn't talk about getting out of Hough," she said.
A few people became nurses or school principals. But, she says, not enough of her classmates fulfilled their career potential.
You can make it out, she often tells her middle- and high-school students. "You don't have to become a statistic that they expect us to be."
She's noticed something else, too. Getting parents involved in their children's careers often leads to them thinking more about their own possibilities.
"I've seen parents helping their children but also stepping out and making bigger moves in their own lives."