social mobility myths

SOCIAL MOBILITY MYTHS

PETER SAUNDERS(www.petersaunders.org.uk)

Presentation to Grammar School Heads Association Annual Conference, London, 19 June 2013

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 irrelevant –social origins are the main factor shaping people’s destinies

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

Myth 1: The belief that we have a mobility problem • 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

Myth 1: The belief that we have a mobility problem

Opening Doors and Breaking Barriers (Coalition’s Social Mobility Strategy, 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) ‘professions close their doors to a wider social spectrum of talent instead of opening them’

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 1970s 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


But politicians seem ignorant or indifferent to this evidence...

‘Mobility Tsar’ Alan 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


But politicians seem ignorant or indifferent to evidence...

‘Mobility Tsar’ Alan 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


They claim UK has less mobility than other comparable 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.

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)


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): Britain ahead of Germany and Denmark, but behind Sweden and the USA

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


Politicians in thrall to Sutton Trust research on income mobility in different countries

This puts UK behind Italy, France, Norway, Australia, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland & Denmark.

But many problems with this research...


Sutton Trust admits:

‘Large standard errors on the Australian, French, British and US estimates make it unclear how these countries should be ranked’

‘There is a great deal of uncertainty about comparisons made on the basis of income mobility’ 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, pp.15 & 37

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


Sutton Trust claims measures of education mobility back up its claims

But 2010 OECD report ranks Britain:

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

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

UK Dept for Education confirms:

‘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: The belief that mobility has been falling

Absolute mobility is falling as the middle class becomes saturated.

But what concerns politicians is 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 believe 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)

This belief that things getting worse again 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.

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...

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

• No studies find any 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


Sutton Trust result seems suspect

‘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)

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?

Government’s 2012 social mobility targets ignore ability:

‘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 bright are these children?How many middle class children should we expect to end up in

middle class jobs?


• The goal: There should be no association between class origin and class destination

• Assumes equal distribution of talent across every class

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

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

• So we should expect children of higher class parents to achieve higher success levels.

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


NCDS (age 33) shows:

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 do 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


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%


When they do mention ability differences, politicians claim it reflects social advantages and disadvantages:

• 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”


This claims rests on evidence from 1970 cohort that bright working class kids seem to 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)


But 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 artefact Jerrim and Vignoles ,Department 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

Use 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.

Myth 4: Social mobility needs more education reform

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 • 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-fives• 30 year inflation of GCSE and A-level grades• Introduction of academies• Replacement of school catchment areas by ballots and other contrivances

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


Undeterred, the government is still emphasising education reform as key to its social mobility strategy

‘fair access to universities’: 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!


We do have a mobility problem – but it’s at the bottom, not the top. Neglectful or inadequate parenting is the key problem:

• 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

• children start school unable to distinguish numbers and letters; some still in nappies

• 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

University admissions quotas irrelevant to this

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• No change in class mobility in 1958-1970 cohorts• No change in income mobility in BHPS in this same period

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

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routine classparents reachedprofessional

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mobility tsar alanmilburn

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