U.K.: Downward mobility on the rise for the first time in generations

[moondust]

06 November 2014

Young people are increasingly likely to slip down the social ladder as they enter adulthood because there is now so little room at the top of the best careers, a ground breaking study into social mobility in the UK has found.

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“Over the past four decades, the experience of upward mobility has become less common, and going down the social ladder has become more common,” said study co-author Erzsébet Bukodi, of the Department of Social Policy and Intervention at the University of Oxford.

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The results of the study suggested that if the Government wanted to improve social mobility, it should do so through economic policies rather than focusing on education, he added. “This focus on educational policy does seem to me to be a bit misguided. What we really need is to try and increase the growth of top-end professional and managerial jobs. It’s no use having a growing proportion of young people with higher-level qualifications unless there’s the demand there on the employment side.”

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“This study demonstrates the challenge facing the UK in improving social mobility – the problem is far greater than previously thought. It shows that a child from a middle-class background is up to 20 times more likely to get a professional job than one from a working-class background with little change in this over time,” they added.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/downward-mobility-on-the-rise-for-the-first-time-in-generations-9841925.html

[LeftishBrit]

1. Thanks Thatcher, and your cloned successors, including Blair

And yes, education is very important in increasing equality (much of my own work is aimed at this end); but it won't work without addressing the economic issues. The way that some of the policy currently translates is into managers blaming schools for having gaps between the achievement of richer and poorer pupils, without considering the most fundamental issue, which is that economic policies perpetuate poverty.

[moondust]

3. Don't you have

RW politicians like those in the U.S. who blame it all on "lazy moochers"?

[LeftishBrit]

4. Pretty much so!

It's the tabloid press that do so the most; and the British equivalent of 'lazy moochers' is 'workshy scroungers' or similar! The politicians are usually slightly more euphemistic, speaking of 'benefit dependency'; 'lack of aspiration'; etc. but certainly they sometimes say what they really feel, e.g. speaking of 'strivers versus skivers'.

[hifiguy]

2. The ultimate "vindication" of Thatcherism

and Blair's Turd Way. What was planned all along.

Coming soon to the US.

[One_Life_To_Give]

5. And the solution to Not enough professional jobs for people is? Outsourcing?

So there are not enough jobs for professionals to include people from working class roots. And the solution to this problem is going to be what?

[moondust]

7. Certainly not offshoring.

Last edited Thu Nov 6, 2014, 08:12 PM - Edit history (1)

Offshoring and automating a lot of lesser skilled jobs will just push more young people to borrow money and go to college in hopes of competing for perhaps the same number of professional and managerial jobs, or even fewer if some of them are also offshored or H1B'd. A lot of those kids aren't going to get that limited number of jobs.

I don't know how much offshoring or automating the U.K. does or how many H1B type programs they have.

You'd think the increased competition for those top jobs would tend to drive down salaries the same way an excess labor pool tends to drive down unskilled wages: supply and demand. But a look at inflated CEO compensation would seem to cast doubt on that free-market theory.

[One_Life_To_Give]

8. Professional not necessarily CEO

We are talking lawyers, Doctors, Engineers, etc. Salaried, usually 6 figures plus. That would include CEO's but also millions of additional people. And the competition in some of those fields has been driving down the cost of labor. Especially when we have to compete with foreign H1B's.

Nut the economy is Rosey. I read it on DU

[gratuitous]

6. Sounds like we need some more austerity!

The beatings will continue until morale improves. It's really up to you, you mooching lot of mooching moochers! As soon as you aren't mooching anymore, we'll see what we can do about some of that upward mobility. Unless you start getting above your station, in which case, need I remind you, there are still plenty more lashes to go around.

Dang, I think I would have made a great slave-driver.