British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
How might social mobility be increased?
A British Academy Forum held on 14 December 2010, chaired by Professor Anthony Heath FBA.
List of participants
Louise Bamfield (Child Poverty Unit)
Dr Helen Carrier (Government Equalities Office)
Caleb Deeks (Cabinet Office)
Roisin Donachie (Cabinet Office)
Stuart Hallifax (British Academy Policy Centre)
Professor Anthony Heath FBA (University of Oxford)
Professor Ruth Lister FBA (Loughborough University)
Professor Stephen Machin FBA (University College London)
Julian McCrae (Institute for Government)
Sir Michael Marmot FBA (University College London)
Jonathan Portes (Cabinet Office)
Alison Pritchard (Government Equalities Office)
Giovanni Razzu (Government Equalities Office)
Professor Diane Reay (University of Cambridge)
Lord Garry Runciman FBA (University of Cambridge)
Dr Anna Zimdars (University of Manchester)
The discussion was opened by Professor Anthony Heath. The following is his advance briefing note:
Social mobility, or rather lack of social mobility, remains a matter of public concern. The Cabinet Office Business Plan 2011-2015 includes as one of its priorities the development of a cross-government social mobility strategy. The British Academy Forum will attempt to explore some of the key issues that would be involved in such a strategy.
There has been a vigorous debate about whether or not social mobility in Britain has declined over recent decades, but there is remarkably little high-quality data that would enable one to pronounce confidently on this. In the Forum we do not propose to rehearse at any length the debate over whether or not mobility in Britain has been declining (since there is no new data with which to tackle this question).
Instead the focus will be on the possible ‘drivers’ of social mobility and of possible policies that might increase rates of mobility. In this context, a key distinction has to be made between ‘absolute’ (or ‘gross’) rates of social mobility and ‘relative’ (or ‘net’) rates of social mobility. Absolute rates tend to be driven by structural changes such as the expansion of salaried professional and managerial positions which provide increasing ‘room at the top’. Relative mobility, in contrast, is in essence the mobility that occurs over and above the mobility that is due to structural change. Relative mobility is often seen as the more appropriate indicator for assessing the openness of a society and the degree of equality of opportunity.
Possible drivers of relative mobility rates include the extent of ‘inequalities of condition’ between the social classes, the extent of class inequalities in access to education (the main channel for access to higher-level positions), or restrictive recruitment practices by employers.
Policy responses too can be of various sorts. Policies that increase rates of economic growth might be expected to increase absolute rates of social mobility. But even in the absence of economic growth and structural change, policies aimed at increasing working-class access to elite educational institutions or occupations may be able to help improve equality of opportunity and hence openness and relative rates of mobility. Policies in turn can be focused either on the ‘supply side’ (e.g. increasing educational qualifications of the labour force such as with the Danish programme of life-long learning), or on the ‘demand side’ (focusing on recruitment practices, e.g. admissions procedures to elite universities).
Professor Anthony Heath FBA (Institute for Social Change, University of Manchester, and Department of Sociology, Oxford University) began with a brief outline of the main conceptual issues, some of the key research findings (focusing on those concerning possible ‘drivers’ of social mobility), types of policy response, and the difficulties involved in evaluating the success of policies in this area.
Dr Helen Carrier (Government Equalities Office) then introduced the discussion.