social mobility myths (2012 update)

SOCIAL MOBILITY MYTHS

PETER SAUNDERS(www.petersaunders.org.uk)

Presentation to Head Masters’ Conference, Belfast, 1 October 2012

Based on Peter Saunders, Social Mobility Myths (Civitas, 2010)and Social Mobility Delusions (Civitas, 2012)

Growing preoccupation with social mobility• Cabinet Office, Getting On, Getting Ahead, 2008

social mobility has failed to improve , need to improve opportunities

Panel on Fair Access to the Professions, Unleashing Aspiration, 2009‘birth, not worth, has become more a determinant of people’s life chances’Britain is ‘a closed shop society’

National Equality Panel , An Anatomy of Economic Inequality in the UK, 2010

mobility is ‘low’ and inequality hinders opportunity

Growing preoccupation with social mobility (cont)Opening Doors and Breaking Barriers (Coalition’s Social Mobility Strategy, launched by Nick Clegg, headed by Alan Milburn) 2011 , updated 2012‘evidence on social mobility is not encouraging... Tragically, we can predict the likely fortunes of too many children, because of the clear influence of social background’ (Clegg)

All-party parliamentary group Interim Report, 7 Key Truths About Social Mobility (May 2012)‘UK mobility is low relative to other OECD countries’ ‘today’s 40-somethings have less mobility than their elders’

Fair Access to Professional Career May 2012 (Alan Milburn’s 1st progress report since appointment as government’s ‘Independent Reviewer on Social Mobility’) ‘professions close their doors to a wider social spectrum of talent instead of opening them’

The 4 social mobility myths

• UK has a serious social mobility problem

• This problem is getting worse, and opportunities for working class children are deteriorating

• Intelligence is basically irrelevant – the problem is social barriers to advancement

• Social mobility must be increased by (yet more) education reform

Myth 1: Do we really have a mobility problem?

Dividing the population into 3 social classes:

• Professional-managerial• Intermediate• Routine & semi-routine

Goldthorpe’s classic study found:

More than half of us are in a different class than the one we were born into

• 2005 General Household Survey:

• 32% men born to routine and semi-routine class parents reached professional-managerial class

• 30% born to professional parents were downwardly mobile


Dividing the population into 3 social classes:

• Professional-managerial• Intermediate• Routine & semi-routine

More than half of us are in a different class than the one we were born into

2005 General Household Survey:

• 32% men born to routine and semi-routine class parents reached professional-managerial class

• 30% men born to professional parents were downwardly mobile


1958 cohort (National Child Development Study):45% of men and 39% women upwardly mobile by age 3327% of men and 37% of women downwardly mobile by 33

1970 (British Cohort Study):42% of men and 41% women upwardly mobile by age 3030% of men and 35% of women downwardly mobile by 30

John Goldthorpe and Michelle Jackson, ‘Intergenerational class mobility in contemporary Britain’ BJS vol 58, 2007


Even those born into the poorest households have excellent prospects of improving themselves...

... despite ‘mobility Tsar’ Alan Milburn’ trying to convince them that they don’t

Milburn on BBC Radio 4 Today programme (5th April 2011):

“We still live in a country where, invariably, if you're born poor, you die poor”

Eighty-one per cent of British men who grew up in families below the poverty line end up in adulthood with incomes above the poverty line

Jo Blanden and Steve Gibbons, The persistence of poverty across generations, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2006, Table 2


Claims that UK mobility ranks worse than other countries

May 2012, Michael Gove: ‘Those who are born poor are more likely to stay poor and those who inherit privilege are more likely to pass on privilege in England than in any comparable country. For those of us who believe in social justice, this stratification and segregation are morally indefensible.’

2011 Opening Doors report : ‘We are less socially mobile than other countries.’

2012 Damien Hinds MP (chair, 7 Key Truths... report): ‘There are plenty of other countries that have much more mobility than us... the UK is always almost in the worst position.

But evidence puts UK about average

Breen (Social Mobility in Europe, 2004) placed Britain in the middle of the international rankings, ahead of Germany and Denmark, but behind Sweden and the USA

OECD (Intergenerational Transmission of Disadvantage 2007) puts UK around the middle between Sweden, Canada and Norway (more fluid) and Germany, Ireland, Italy and France (more rigid)


Claims that UK mobility ranks worse than other countries

May 2012, Michael Gove: ‘Those who are born poor are more likely to stay poor and those who inherit privilege are more likely to pass on privilege in England than in any comparable country. For those of us who believe in social justice, this stratification and segregation are morally indefensible.’

2011 Opening Doors report : ‘We are less socially mobile than other countries.’

2012 Damien Hinds MP (chair, 7 Key Truths... report): ‘There are plenty of other countries that have much more mobility than us... the UK is always almost in the worst position.

But evidence on occupational mobility puts UK about average

Breen (Social Mobility in Europe, 2004) placed Britain in the middle of the international rankings, ahead of Germany and Denmark, but behind Sweden and the USA

OECD (Intergenerational Transmission of Disadvantage 2007) puts UK around the middle between Sweden, Canada and Norway (more fluid) and Germany, Ireland, Italy and France (more rigid)


Q: So why do politicians think our mobility rate is so poor?

A: Sutton Trust research on income mobility in different countries which puts UK behind Italy, France, Norway, Australia, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland & Denmark.Jo Blanden, ‘How much can we learn from international comparisons of social mobility? Centre for the Economics of Education Departmental Paper no.111, November 2009, London School of Economics

But many problems with this research...


• Parental incomes in many countries estimated, not known;

• One parent or both?/How old are children when measured? Stephen Gorard, ‘A reconsideration of rates of social mobility in Britain’ British Journal of Sociology of Education vol.29, 2008

• Rankings are misleading: Blanden admits: ‘Large standard errors on the Australian, French, British and US estimates make it unclear how these countries should be ranked’ (p.15)

OECD warns: ‘These comparisons can be invalid because different studies use different variable definitions, samples, estimation methods and time periods’‘Intergenerational mobility in OECD countries’ 2010, p.9

Blanden herself accepts: ‘There is a great deal of uncertainty about comparisons made on the basis of income mobility’ (p.37)

Myth 1: Do we really have a mobility problem? Blanden claims measures of education mobility back up Sutton Trust claim that UK performs worse than other countries – but not so...

2010 OECD mobility report ranks Britain:

• 9th out of 30 on how far children’s educational attainment is independent of their parents’ socio-economic status;

• 2nd out of 17 on the extent to which years of schooling of parents and children differ

• in the middle of the rankings on the probability of a child attending university if their parents are not graduates

• 5th out of 14 on the risk of early school leaving, comparing parents and children.

Recent UK Dept for Education review concludes: ‘Student attainment is no more closely related to socio-economic background than on average across the OECD’ (DfE Research Report No.206, April 2012, p.2

Myth 2: Has mobility really been falling?

Absolute mobility is falling as the middle class becomes saturated.

100 years ago, ¾ were working class, ¼ middle class; today this has almost reversed

– expansion of professions in last 100 years benefited all strata equally... but it cannot continue

But what drives the social mobility agenda is concern with relative mobility – the chances of working class children relative to chances of middle class children

- slowdown in growth of middle class has no necessary implications for relative mobility chances


Politicians insist relative mobility getting worse:

• 2011 Opening Doors report: ‘social mobility for children born in Great Britain in 1970 got slightly worse than for children born in 1958.’

• 2012 7 Truths report: ‘Today’s 40-somethings have shown less mobility than their elders.’

Media pick up on this and exaggerate it:

“soul-sapping immobility” (New Statesman)“sad death of opportunity in an increasingly class-bound Britain” (Daily Mail)

Belief that things getting worse reflects Sutton Trust research...


Sutton Trust looks at father-son income correlations in 1958 and 1970 birth cohorts.

Find apparent fall in fluidity in later cohort.

Huge media and political attention paid to these findings!

1958 (NCDS) • 35% of kids from top income

quartile got to top quartile• 17% fell to bottom quartile

1970 (BCS) • 42% of kids from top income

quartile got to top quartile• 11% fell to bottom quartile

‘coefficient of elasticity’ rose from 0.21 for the 1958 cohort to 0.29 for 1970 cohort


BUT...• No difference in class mobility between 1958 and 1970 cohorts: ‘The

pattern of fluidity is very much the same’ (Goldthorpe and Jackson, Br Jnl Soc, 2007)

• No difference in income mobility for cohorts born in this period when look at British Household Panel Study: ‘There are no strong changes in intergenerational mobility across cohorts from 1950 to 1972’ (Ermisch & Nicoletti ISER WP 2005)

• Li & Devine compare 1991 British Household Panel Survey and 2005 General Household Survey: find ‘a slight but significant increase in fluidity’ in the years Sutton Trust claims things getting worse (Sociological Research Online vol.16, 2011)


Goldthorpe thinks Sutton Trust finding due to high variance in parental incomes in 1958 study producing artificially low correlations

‘It seems widely believed that in recent decades intergenerational mobility has declined. This prevailing view is simply mistaken’ (Goldthorpe and Mills. Nat Instit Ec Rev 2008)

Even if the finding is valid, it is the only study reporting a mobility fall

‘This slender analysis has had more influence on public policy debate than any academic paper of the last 20 years. The lazy consensus which has decreed the end of social mobility is both wrong and damaging’ (David Goodhart, Prospect, 2008)

Myth 3: Does class really trump ability?

Nearly all recent official reports ignore cognitive ability

This is reflected in Government’s 2012 social mobility targets:‘Those with parents in managerial or professional occupations are almost twice as likely as others to end up in those occupations as adults. This is one of the indicators that we will use to measure progress’

But how many middle class children should we expect to end up in middle class jobs?

Myth 3: Does class really trump ability?• Implicit assumption that there should

be no association between class origin and class destination

• but this assumes equal distribution of talent across every class

• In a meritocracy, talented people will be recruited to the higher classes...

• ...where they can be expected to produce more talented children (parent-child IQ correlation = 0.5).

• Thus (unlike race) we should expect average ability levels to vary between children in different social classes.

STEP 1: Bright youngsters do well at school and get top jobs

STEP 2: They meet bright partners

STEP 3: They have children of above average ability

STEP 4: Their children in turn do well at school and get top jobs


What happens to mobility chances when we control for IQ? (NCDS data, age 33)

High ability children rarely fail irrespective of their class of origin:

• 65% of top IQ quartile get to professional-managerial class• Only 5% of top IQ quartile end up in semi- or unskilled manual jobs

But low ability middle class children sometimes succeed when they ‘shouldn’t’:

• 41% of middle class children in the lowest IQ quartile end up in professional-managerial class• 21% of working class children in the lowest IQ quartile end up in professional-managerial class

So the ‘problem’ is not bright working class kids who don’t succeed, but dull middle class kids who don’t fail enough (hence the attack on internships, private schools, etc)


CATEGORY PROPORTION OF VARIANCE EXPLAINED = 35% of which...Social advantages/disadvantages:

Parents class 3%Housing conditions <1%Independent school <1%

Parents’ behaviour and attitudes:Aspirations for child 1%Interest in child’s education 3%

Individual characteristics:

Academic ability 17%Ambition and hard work 5%Qualifications 6%

TOTAL VARIANCE EXPLAINED 35%


But doesn’t IQ itself reflect social advantages?Widely reported evidence from 1970 cohort that bright working class kids fall behind dull middle class kids by 10:

‘Social inequalities appear to dominate the apparent early positive signs of academic ability for most of those low SES children who do well early on.’ (Feinstein, Centre for Economic Performance Paper No.146, June 2003)


Hugely influential ammunition in mobility agenda:

• Reproduced twice in 2011 Opening Doors... Report: ‘Gaps in development between children from different backgrounds can be detected even at birth and widen rapidly during the first few years of life’

• Clegg 2011: ‘By the age of five, bright children from poorer backgrounds have been overtaken by less bright children from richer ones – and from this point on, the gaps tend to widen even further.’

• Gove 2010: “In effect, rich thick kids do better than poor clever children when they arrive at school and the situation as they go through gets worse”


But Jerrim and Vignoles show the apparent cross-over of bright lower class children and dull higher class children is generated entirely by regression to the mean. It is a statistical artefactDepartment of Quantitative Social Science Working Paper no.11-01, April 2011, Institute of Education

Can correct for this by using different tests to:• Assign children to high/low ability at outset• Measure their changing ability scores over time

They do this using data from 2000 Millenium cohort where 2 different ability tests were used...


Jerrim and Vignoles:

‘There is currently an overwhelming view amongst academics and policymakers that highly able children from poor homes get overtaken by their affluent (but less able) peers before the end of primary school. Although this empirical finding is treated as a stylised fact, the methodology used to reach this conclusion is seriously flawed. After attempting to correct for the aforementioned problem, we find little evidence that this is actually the case in current data.’

This research has been completely ignored by politicians.Smeared by left-wing media:

“Poor children's life chances face a new assault from the right” (The Guardian)

Myth 4: The social mobility strategy is the wrong answer to the wrong problem

We do have a mobility problem - with children of underclass

Millennium cohort, age 5:

• only 1/3rd of the poorest children living with both biological parents, compared with 88% in the middle income group.

• 1 in 5 poorest kids been born to teenage mothers• over 1/3rd had parents with no good GCSE between them• 11 month gap between average verbal test scores of children from low and

middle income families - 40% of it due to home environment and parental factors

Waldfogel & Washbrook, Low income and early cognitive development in the UK Sutton Trust Research Report, February 2010

Bad parenting the key issue for these children


But this is not Milburn’s priority for Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission.“Milburn [says] today in a major speech... he will make fair access to universities his first priority” ‘Universities must do more to end middle class bias says Alan Milburn’ The Guardian 25 January 2011

Financial penalties on universities which fail to achieve ‘fair access’ targets

But no evidence of class bias in university recruitment:IFS finds social class differences in university enrolments entirely explained by gaps in applicants’ prior educational attainments (reported in ‘7 Key Truths...’)

So govt social mobility strategy will make a meritocratic system anti-meritocratic!


50 years of policies designed to tap into ‘pools of wasted working class talent’

• Education Priority Areas • End 11+ and replace grammar schools with comprehensives• End academic streaming• Raise school leaving age to 16 (and soon 18)• Abolition of direct grant schools• ‘Progressive’ teaching methods and reading schemes• Move to an all-graduate teaching profession• Amalgamation of universities and polytechnics• Introduction of the core curriculum• Doubling of schools expenditure by Blair and new build programme• Huge expansion of higher education – 50% target for 18 year-olds• Extension of free pre-schooling to the under-five• Inflation of GCSE and A-level grades• Introduction of academies• Replacement of school catchment areas by ballots and other contrivances• Now ‘fair access’ rules imposed on universities.

Yet throughout this period, relative social mobility rates have hardly shifted.


Why are politicians so determined to believe we have a problem that doesn’t exist?

• Evidence very technical• Reputations invested in the myth• Ability differences politically embarrassing• The national myth of a class-ridden society• Fits with old Labour class prejudice and Tory

‘modernising’• Disproportionate influence of Sutton Trust

Conclusion

UK is not a ‘closed shop society’• More than ½ population moves between 3 classes• Class mobility no worse in UK than elsewhere• Comparative income mobility data unreliable; education data look quite favourable

Social mobility is not declining• Fluidity (relative rates) rose slightly 1991-2005• No change in class mobility in 1958-1970 cohorts• No change in income mobility in BHPS

Individual characteristics mainly determine outcomes• Ability & hard work much more important than class origins• Half variance in occupational outcomes explained by IQ alone• Not true that ‘rich thick kids’ overtake poor clever ones

Attacking elite universities and independent schools is tackling the wrong problem• Underclass parenting is the key problem• University recruitment is wholly meritocratic

Conclusion

Britain is not a ‘perfect meritocracy’

• downward mobility by dull middle class children is a bit sticky• underclass children damaged by poor parenting

But for most UK children, if you are bright and work hard, you will almost certainly succeed.

social mobility myths (2012 update)

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