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Category: Labour market

The type of social mobility no-one talks about

James Plunkett

Ed Miliband today 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. With young people trapped out of employment and housing, and increasingly pushed out of education by fees and cuts, this is a generation that risks being left behind.

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. But when we look at the other measure, we see a different story emerge.

The Spirit Level: is income equality the sole solution?

Vidhya Alakeson

Earlier this week, the ippr hosted a seminar with Richard Wilkinson, author of The Spirit Level. Wilkinson presented data set after data set to make one basic point: more equal societies have better social outcomes such as rates of mental illness and teenage pregnancy, not just for those at the bottom but for everyone. A wealthy, well-educated person in Sweden will be healthier and his children will do better at school than a similarly wealthy person in the UK. This is because Sweden is a more equal society than the UK, by which Wilkinson means that the ratio of the incomes of the top 20 percent in society compared to the bottom 20 percent is smaller.

Wilkinson’s theory about why unequal societies have poorer social outcomes stems from evolutionary psychology. He argues that in an unequal society, concerns about status dominate. Those at the bottom of the income distribution have low status which leads to persistent stress which in turn leads to poor social outcomes due to the negative impacts of elevated levels of cortisol, the stress hormone. The impact of cortisol on health, in particular, has been well documented by the World Health Organisation and others as part of the explanation for persistent health inequalities...

Social mobility and earnings change over the life-cycle

Lee Savage

Since the emergency budget in June of this year, government policymaking has been unswervingly focused on reducing the deficit. However, the coalition has asked to be judged not just on its impact on the public finances, but also on the progress it makes in increasing social mobility.

Social mobility is undoubtedly an important issue. It can provide us with a measure of meritocratic advancement in the UK together with helping to reduce inequality. But understanding of what social mobility is and what it means for people’s life chances is still quite limited.

Low-to-middle earners suffer 5.4 per cent drop in average salaries, by Matthew Whittaker

Matthew Whittaker

This article was first published on Left Foot Forward

The 2010 ‘Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings’ data released today by the ONS shows that the median annual salary earned by all workers fell by 0.4 per cent in nominal terms from £21,310 in 2009 to £21,221 in 2010. Once inflation is taken into account (RPI increased by 5.3 per cent between April 2009 and April 2010, which is the date the ASHE survey relates to), stagnation turns to significant contraction, with the median salary falling by a sizeable 5.4 per cent.

This overall drop in part reflects the increase in part-time jobs relative to full-time since the start of the recession. However, even controlling for this, wages have fallen in real-terms: the median salary among full-time workers fell by 4.8 per cent to £25,879, while the median part-time salary dropped by 6.2 per cent to £8,519.