Social Mobility: And Its Enemies (Pelican Books)

by Lee Elliot Major

Failure to do something about this will store up greater social and economic problems for future generations. It will ultimately unravel the cohesive society we all want to live in. Without drawing on talents from all backgrounds our elites become detached from, and disinterested in, the rest of society.

Canadians and Australians do not suffer the same class and cultural divide that has forever obsessed and defined Brits.

Trickle-down economics had in reality led to ever greater economic divides, as those already rich accrued a greater share of the economic spoils and the poor increasingly lost out. The wealthy were watertight. The next generation inherited the worse of all worlds: high levels of inequality, low levels of social mobility and bleak prospects for economic growth.

Economic boom has been replaced by economic gloom.

A credible alternative vocational stream to challenge the high-status academic path has yet to materialize.

Joseph Stiglitz says, ‘another world is possible’: one where living standards and well-being are higher as a result of greater mobility and lower inequality.

Place matters: where you are born as well as who you are born to has a profound impact on your life prospects.

For the US economist Lawrence Katz, one reason for the political unrest is that many people perceive that they no longer have a shot at a good local job in the way their parents did.

Our analysis of the voting data suggests the Leave campaign won the referendum partly because it persuaded the country’s socially immobile that an independent Britain would hold better prospects for them – whether this was true or not.

In the intergenerational opportunity game, yesterday’s high-mobility areas can be today’s exclusive but stagnant communities. Schools become middle-class enclaves. Inequality in earnings balloons. Far from acting as the great social leveller, the education system is manipulated and taken over by elites and vested interests to ensure their offspring, irrespective of talent, do not slip down the social ladder.

The service is not just about exam results. Tutors will also equip children with the essential life skills needed to prosper in (and rule) the world – confidence, articulacy and resilience, as well as a certain charm. It is why overseas clients demand the most prestigious super tutor them of all: an Eton-educated Oxbridge graduate.

Figure 4.2 Cognitive development of young children and their parents’ socio-economic status.

‘the rug rat race’.

‘Robbins principle’:

articulacy, resilience, confidence and people skills

There is evidence that talented students in state schools suffer from the ‘not the likes of me’ attitude which precludes them from applying to the most prestigious universities in the first place.51 This can be made worse by well-meaning but risk-averse teachers.

Sociologists have identified a ‘class ceiling’ in Britain preventing the upwardly mobile from enjoying equivalent earnings to those from upper-middle-class backgrounds.