The type of social mobility no one talks about
10:30 am - February 5th 2011
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contribution by James Plunkett
Ed Miliband yesterday addressed the issue of social mobility in a speech in Gateshead. His argument was built around the concept of the ‘British Promise’ – the idea that each generation of children will do better than their parents.
It’s our own rather less lofty version of the American Dream, and it’s a promise, he says, that’s in danger of being broken.
Miliband is not alone in his pessimism about social mobility in modern Britain. Leading researchers put us near the bottom of
international league tables, and evidence suggests that things are getting worse over time.
But what’s less widely understood is that almost all of this evidence (and Miliband’s speech) refers to just one of the two main measures of social mobility. Data on this commonly-discussed measure is undeniably gloomy. When we look at the other measure, we see a different story emerge.
The first measure – and the one that dominates – is known as ‘intergenerational mobility’, the extent to which your earnings depend on those of your parents. It’s a way of understanding how dynamic or ossified we are as a society, of whether a bright kid in a poor household can buck the trend.
The second measure, on which most research is silent, is known as ‘intra-generational mobility’. It refers to the extent to which people can climb the ladder within their own lifetimes. Do people, once they’re in work, get stuck on a fairly level income throughout their career, or do they move up relative to other people in society?
In other words, regardless of whether you’re following your parents or not, do you gradually achieve your aspirations as you age?
Clearly these two measures of mobility are linked; more of one is likely to mean more of the other. But not necessarily. We can imagine a highly meritocratic society (with high intergenerational mobility) in which career paths were very flat, and so mobility is low in intra-generational terms.
Likewise, a society could be highly stratified along a series of entrenched social classes, but people might still earn more as they move throughout their lives.
This latter type of mobility – increasing earnings throughout the life-course – is almost entirely ignored in the public debate and the academic literature. Yet it too helps to define the nature of our society. For people who live on low to middle incomes in particular, being able to work your way up in society as you get older is hugely psychologically important.
It means moving closer to social aspirations like home-ownership and the accumulation of savings year after year, rather than simply treading water, to no long-term reward.
It tells us whether we live not just in an ‘opportunity’ society, but also in an ‘escalator’ society, in which people feel like they’re ‘getting somewhere’ as their lives progress.
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At the Resolution Foundation we’re undertaking a major programme of work to fill the research gap that exists on this latter measure of social mobility. Our first set of findings, focusing on changes in mobility for people in their 30s from the 1990s and 2000s, will be released later this month. They tell a far more positive story than many expect.
They also contain interesting insights into the way that mobility is playing out across genders. If you’re interested in hearing more when they’re released, you can contact us or follow us on twitter.
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Reader comments
That Twitter account doesn’t exist – also linked to from their homepage.
“This latter type of mobility – increasing earnings throughout the life-course – is almost entirely ignored in the public debate and the academic literature.”
Well of course: because this intra-generational mobility happens a lot more often, thus rather puncturing the myth that we have no social mobility.
It’s the same reason everyone bleats on about the gender pay gap without ever noting the gender spending gap: it doesn’t conform to the desired narrative that while it’s true that men earn more, women do a lot more of the spending of those earnings. How can you run a political movement decrying how oppressed women are when people keep reminding you that they spend 80% of household incomes?
@ 2 Tim
Well, you could say that they spent most of the money because they are expected to do the shopping. Whether accurate or not.
*3
Sorry, I wasn’t terribly clear there. What I wanted to convey was that spending most of the money in no way suggests that you are equally or more powerful than your partner, while at the same time uber-feminists would have no problem painting this trend as evidence of patriachal abuse even if that wasn’t true.
I thought this was going to be a discussion of the other kind of social mobility, you know, the one where the children of those at the top can fall down the ladder, we can’t all be on top of the pile after all.
5 – I also assumed it would be about downward social mobility, the type people don’t like to mention.
“I also assumed it would be about downward social mobility, the type people don’t like to mention.”
Unless bankers are involved, probably. I made the same assumption as you two above.
The problem with “the promise” is that it’s already been broken. Gen X (of which I am one) have on average done less well in terms of social mobility than the baby boomers that went before them, as in have relatively less disposable income, more debt, smaller pension, longer working lives, etc than the baby boomers.
There are of course many ways of measuring “better than”, but overall It’s unlikely that any generation will ever enjoy the advantages the boomers did, so the promise is already pretty meaningless
@8 Matt Munro: “Gen X (of which I am one) have on average done less well in terms of social mobility than the baby boomers that went before them…”
Unfortunately, terms that describe generational differences are often based on what happened in the USA. The USA baby boom is defined as the period from 1946 to 1964. Owing to post war rationing, the UK baby boom started much later and ended later.
If we wish to find a UK reference point about which to discuss social mobility, start with the Robbins report of 1963. Robbins advocated a massive increase of graduate students which government delivered. And we do not need to talk about Gen X and Gen Y. We should talk about Gen 1960, Gen 1970, Gen 1980 et al.
In literature, Gen 1960 is defined by “Lucky Jim’. It was a 1954 book, but it fits Gen 1960. See also Brideshead Revisited for the Oxbridge experience. Bradbury did Gen 1970 in “The History Man”. David Lodge described Gen 1980.
We need to own our own history and experiences, UK and European. Born in 1963, I am Gen 1980. An adolescent of Thatcher and stupid unemployment.
So how do those who believe in the social immobility story answer people like Prof. Peter Saunders who says it is a myth based on a dodgy use of statistics? Moreover, social mobility is no worse in Britain than other comparable nations and the idea that we have regressed is based on dodgy statistics?
Why is so difficult to believe that what we are often measuring is the distribution of IQ across the population?
http://www.civitas.org.uk/press/prSocMobJune10.htm
http://www.petersaunders.org.uk/social_mobility_and_intelligence.html
Thanks Richard W. The link to Peter Saunders is a cracker.
But remember that this thread is about social mobility, now and then.
If we are picking winners to attend university based on IQ, the current system fails. There may be some obvious candidates, who can grab a place and succeed. Most applicants are 18 year olds who are trying to understand how the world works.
University admissions tutors define their job as “spotting potential”. What is the time frame?
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- carlylou
Interesting. Social mobilty within our own lives? (no.) http://bit.ly/gj8Xcm /via @libcon
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- Link Loving 09.02.11 « Casper ter Kuile
[…] there’s a British version of the American Dream. Smaller, of course. And less […]
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