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Want to earn your way up? Fine – just don’t be a woman, live outside of London, or work part-time

Gavin Kelly

This post originally appeared on Gavin's New Statesman blog

Who earns their way up in today's Britain? Recent work suggests the story of mobility is not all doom and gloom. It showed a significant rise in overall earnings mobility in the 2000s compared to the 1990s, admittedly starting from a low base. More people are now climbing the earnings ladder in their own lifetime, which of course means that more people are falling down too.

But who benefited from this from increased mobility – who went up, who slid down and who got stuck? Given the constant preoccupation of the entire political class with the notion of social mobility, it’s rather surprising that until now none of them could answer these questions. Now new research allows us to fill this gap, and in doing so it tells us some important things about the character of contemporary Britain.

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Willetts plays snakes and ladders

Vidhya Alakeson

This post originally appeared on The Spectator Blog

Social mobility has become something of a hot topic for the coalition. February's Social Mobility White Paper made it the government's number one social policy goal. Yet arguments over tuition fees have rather drowned out much of what they have to say on the topic, particularly when it comes to education and skills. So it was interesting to hear Higher Education Minister David Willetts restate the government's case with a speech at the Resolution Foundation yesterday.

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