It takes some serious cognitive dissonance to take a study from the Heritage Foundation and a study from the CEPR and say "there's common ground here."

What if we put it together this way? Automation, foreign competition and outsourcing lead to a decline in well-paying manufacturing jobs, which, in turn, leads to higher levels of unemployment and diminished upward mobility, which then leads to fewer marriages, a rise in the proportion of nonmarital births, increased withdrawal from the labor force, impermanent cohabitation and a consequent increase in dependence on government support.

If you put it that way, I'll put it this way:

With no incentive to provide a living wage, industry requires Americans to compete against 3rd world labor in pursuit of profit that, instead of "trickling down", accumulates amongst those already in possession of the majority of national capital.

which, in turn, leads to higher levels of unemployment and diminished upward mobility, which then leads to fewer marriages, a rise in the proportion of nonmarital births, increased withdrawal from the labor force, impermanent cohabitation and a consequent increase in dependence on government support.

Right. Well, at least we all agree that poverty exists.

many conservatives fail to see the extent to which equal opportunity, a central principle of our national self-understanding, is becoming harder to achieve.

No, many conservatives don't give a fuck. There is exactly nothing about the conservative platform that values "equal opportunity" nor has there been since Teddy Roosevelt.

What makes people poor? Wealth accumulation. What is the goal of the Republican Party? Wealth accumulation. This is not a mystery, nor is it something worthy of deep thinking.