This multidisciplinary project mainly funded by the ESRC explores a range of evidence about the development of social gradients in child development, from education, health through to risky behaviours. One stream of the research has focused on social mobility in the UK and in particular comparing the evidence across different cohorts and across countries. Much of this research has been drawn on by the government Social Mobility Strategy launched today.
The research indicates that social mobility among those leaving school in the late 1980s was low, both with respect to earlier generations and other developed countries. Access to the top jobs became increasingly focused on those with above average incomes who looked increasing like the average in terms of ability. Education is found to be one of the key drivers of social mobility with the closer ties between family background and educational attainment driving the lower levels of mobility across time. Much of the educational disadvantage of those from poorer families is evident before children enter the school system and is related to differences in the home learning environment, making early years education and parenting a key issue for promoting social mobility. However, educational gaps between the affluent and poor widen through childhood and appear related with differences in aspirations and the belief that one’s own efforts can make a difference. For the youngest cohorts of children, not yet earning adults, there is suggestive evidence that there may have been a reversal of this trend in recent years with family income in childhood becoming less associated with GCSE attainment. Whether this is borne out in further education and labour market returns remains to be seen. In light of the importance of post-16 education and access to university on differential life chances, the large increases in tuition fees and scrapping of EMA are two policies that may well work against any attempts to equalise mobility in the UK if they deter poorer young people from continuing education.
As a submission to the Panel for Fair Access to the Professions, this report documents the origins of those individuals entering into the top professions in the two British birth cohort studies. Comparing the average family incomes in childhood of those working in the top professions indicates that those who go on to become doctors and lawyers are from richer families on average than those who become nurses or teachers. More worryingly, this trend appears to have worsened for many of the professions considered for those born in 1970 compared to those born in 1958, with the gaps in family income between the top professions and the sample average increasing over time. Evidence on the ability levels of these individuals suggests that whilst those who became doctors and lawyers were of higher ability than the sample average, this trend appear to have decreased across time.
Who gets the best jobs? The economics evidence
Bulletin report: Social mobility and the professions
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This paper compares estimates of the extent of intergenerational income mobility over time in Britain. Estimates based on two British birth cohorts show that mobility appears to have fallen in a cross-cohort comparison of peope who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s (the 1958 birth cohort) as compared to a cohort who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s (the 1970 birth cohort). The sensitivity of labour market earnings to parental income rises, thereby showing less intergenerational mobility for the more recent cohort. This supports theoretical notions that the widening wage and income distribution that occured from the late 1970s onwards slowed down the extent of mobility up or down the distribution across generations.
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The recent literature on intergenerational mobility in the UK has been focused on measuring the level and change in the relationship between parental income and children’s earnings as adults among recent cohorts. This paper is the first to analyse in detail the factors that generate these links. The paper seeks to account for the level of income persistence in the 1970 BCS cohort and also to explore the decline in mobility in the UK between the 1958 NCDS cohort and the 1970 cohort. The mediating factors considered are childhood health, cognitive skills, non-cognitive traits, educational attainment and labour market attachment. We find that these variables together explain slightly more than half of the intergenerational link for men. Changes in the relationships between these variables, parental income and earnings are able to explain three quarters of the rise in intergenerational persistence across the cohorts. The increased persistence in the second cohort comes from an increased influence of parental income in determining educational attainment, especially higher education, and labour market attachment. It is also clear that the stronger relationship between parental income and education comes in part through the growing relationship between parental income and the non-cognitive characteristics that influence education outcomes.
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The relationship between the incomes of the family a child is growing up in and the education level the child obtains has been of great interest to researchers for a number of reasons. Firstly, this gives us a measure of educational inequality in its own right and secondly, because the relationship between family income and education is also one of the key drivers of intergenerational income mobility across time in the UK and gradients in life chances across a range of other domains. This paper explores the evolution of the relationship between family income and education for a group of cohorts from those born in 1958 to those born in 1991/92. The range of educational relationships we can measure obviously depends on the age of the child. For older cohorts, who we observe as finished in education, we can measure the full range of educational outcomes up to degree level and their relationship with family income. For younger cohorts who are in earlier stages of education, we can measure test scores and GCSE results but not later educational outcomes.
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Family income is found to be more closely related to sons’ earnings for those born in 1970 compared to those born in 1958. This result is in stark contrast to the finding on the basis of social class; intergenerational mobility for this outcome is found to be unchanged. We set up a formal framework which relates mobility in measured family income/earnings to mobility in social class. Building on this framework we then test a number of hypotheses to explain the difference between the trends. We reject Erikson and Goldthorpe’s (2009) assertion that the divergent results are driven by the poorer measure of permanent family income in the 1958. Instead we find evidence of an increase in the intergenerational persistence of the permanent component of income that is unrelated to social class.
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This research focuses on a range of factors under the umbrella term 'aspirations, attitudes and behaviours', encompassing a wide variety of influences throughout childhood. This study uses a number of large-scale longitudinal data sources capturing groups of children in the UK from early childhood through to late adolescence and examines attainment gaps between richer and poorer children and influences on these, from pre-school through to secondary school. The primary focus considers the importance of expectations and aspirations for higher education, as well as looking at the intergenerational picture. The research suggests some policy conclusions relating to parents and the family home, and children's own attitudes and behaviours that might inform policy to affect mobility patterns in the UK.
Detailed research behind this report can be found in a Special Issue of the Longitudinal and Life Course Studies Journal
