The papers in this dissertation investigate the patterns and consequence of intergenerational mobility in the United States. First, I examine changes in the share of Black and white children earning more than their parents. I find that declines in absolute income mobility for Black children, from 92% to 41% between 1940 and 1987 birth cohorts, are steeper than for whites. In the preferred specification, the racial gap increases from 2 to 8 pp. For Black men, a principal driver of low mobility is their high rate of institutionalization. For white women, family formation plays a key role in achieving upward mobility. Black women have much higher mobility in individual income, but not in family income. Mobility declines are largest in the South, where Black parental income was particularly low in the early cohorts. Second, I investigate the consequences of class mobility for people's beliefs. Do children growing up in a particular class retain its beliefs? And is the process of moving between classes itself associated with shifts in beliefs? I find evidence that people's values show relatively strong, and their material interests comparatively weak associations with parental class. Moreover, people who move from one class to another are more likely to hold the beliefs of the higher-status class across a number of domains, such that the upwardly mobile are more tolerant, the downwardly mobile more hostile to redistribution. I also find evidence for resentment regarding political ideology, where mobility is associated with lower chances of holding the beliefs of the higher-status class. Third, I analyze whether changes in educational stratification have resulted in greater parental influence on people's level of social distrust. Compared to own education, has parental education grown in significance? I find evidence that men, for whom educational expansion has stalled, saw increases in the relative weight of parental education on social distrust. At the same time, women saw continued increases in educational attainment and decreases in the weight of parental background, relative to their own educational attainment.