Executive Summary
Social mobility remains at the very top of the political agenda. Yet the UK has
traditionally lacked a data source extensive enough to pinpoint exactly where to
target policy interventions intended to improve social mobility. This report capitalises
on new socio-economic background questions within the UK Labour Force Survey
(LFS) to provide the most comprehensive analysis of social mobility to-date. Drawing
on an unusually large sample of 64,566 we are able to move beyond the normal
measures of national mobility rates to shine a light on a number of pressing but
largely unexplored questions. In particular, we hone in on mobility in the top
echelons of British society by examining the openness of the professions, and at the
bottom by looking at intergenerational worklessness. We end with three proposals to
improve this important data source to help us answer some key questions regarding
social mobility. Below we summarise our main findings:
1. Rates of Social Mobility
Social mobility represents the norm and not the exception in contemporary Britain –
43% experience some form of upward mobility compared to their parents whereas
29% experience downward movement. However, strong barriers to equality of
opportunity persist. The odds of those from professional backgrounds ending up in
professional jobs are 2.5 times higher than the odds of those from less advantaged
backgrounds reaching the professions. For those from working-class backgrounds,
the odds of following in their parents’ occupational footsteps are 2.3 times higher
than the odds of those from more advantaged backgrounds moving into workingclass jobs.
We also find that 45% of earnings inequalities are passed across
generations.
2. Access and Progression within the Professions
Britain’s traditional professions such as medicine, law, journalism, and academia
remain dominated by those from advantaged backgrounds. 73% of doctors are from
professional and managerial backgrounds and less than 6% are from working-class
backgrounds. However, there are clear grounds for optimism in some sectors. For
example, technical professions such as engineering and IT as well as many public
sector professions are markedly more open – with a clear majority not from
professional families.
Moving from who gets ‘in’ to who gets ‘on’ we find evidence of a powerful and largely
unacknowledged ‘class pay gap’ within the professions; those from working-class
backgrounds earn on average £6,800 less than colleagues from professional and
managerial backgrounds. This is partly explained by differences in education and
occupational segregation, but even when comparing individuals with the same
education, occupation and level of experience, those from working-class
backgrounds are still paid £2,242 less than more privileged colleagues. This penalty
is exacerbated for upwardly mobile women and ethnic minorities who face a ‘double
disadvantage’ in earnings. Our analysis also reveals that the class pay gap is
particularly marked in finance, medicine and IT.
3. Intergenerational Worklessness
While there is little evidence of generations of families never working, we do find that
people from workless households are 15-18 percentage points more likely to be
workless themselves as adults, a finding which is broadly consistent across gender
and age. Our analysis suggests that intergenerational health issues and particularly
local economic conditions are fundamental in explaining this association. For those
currently living in areas with low unemployment there are only small differences in
workless rates between those who grew up in a workless versus a working
household. In contrast, people currently living in areas of high unemployment from
workless households are over 25 percentage points more likely to be workless than
those from working households. The impact of these external conditions, we argue,
go some way in dispelling the myth that people from workless families simply collect
welfare payments as a lifestyle choice rather than working.
4. Strengthening Social Mobility Data in the future
We propose that the LFS social mobility unit could be significantly strengthened with
the inclusion of new questions relating to parental education and, in particular, region
of origin. While the sample size is large enough to enable a detailed exploration of
regional patterns of social mobility, the current survey only asks about people’s
current location, hampering a robust regional analysis. We also emphasise the
benefits of continuing this unit of questions, which over time is likely to become the
UK’s most authoritative data source for answering important policy questions about
changes in social mobility. We suggest that the social mobility questions could be
asked less frequently, every second or third July-September wave, including the
additional questions, at a zero-sum cost.