The poor kept poor

Submitted by Matthew on 6 June, 2012 - 7:34

Thatcherism was reputed, despite its right-wing drift, to increase social mobility.

The gap between the rich and the poor increased, but maybe the chance of people from poor backgrounds becoming rich would rise.

A grocer's daughter became prime minister. Proverbially, East End barrow-boys became ultra-rich financial traders in the City.

In fact, however, social mobility is decreasing. Poor children born in the 1970s are more likely to be poor in adulthood than poor children from the 1950s.

33% of top journalists are supplied by Oxford university alone. 54% of them, as of 2006, had been to fee-paying schools. It was 49% in 1986.

75% of senior judges, and 27% of top civil servants, went to fee-paying schools. The new figures come from a May 2012 Cabinet Office report.

They seem paradoxical. In the 1950s only about 3% of young people got university degrees and today about 35% of each cohort gets a degree. Surely that must improve the chances of people from poor backgrounds "rising" socially through education?

But in the 1950s lots of people from well-off backgrounds did not go to university. Lots of well-paid jobs were open to people without university degrees. Today, almost all people from well-off backgrounds go to university, and many big corporations demand university degrees (i.e. proof that the applicant can jump through hoops in a sustained way: the content of the course is usually irrelevant) as preconditions for all their better-paid jobs. Bright young people without degrees, who could rise high in the 1950s, are now blocked.

Conversely, if someone from a poor background did get to university in the 1950s she or he was practically guaranteed a well-paid job after graduating. Many degrees from many universities today guarantee nothing. Elite occupations can restrict their recruitment to the elite universities.

As income inequality increases, the gap in living conditions between poor children and better-off children increases, and the insecurity and stress in many poor families increases too, thus limiting the chance of poor children doing well in education.

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