What Do We Know and What Should We Do About Social Mobility?. Lee Elliot Major
the Westminster elites and the communities they are meant to serve. The least socially mobile areas of the UK were those areas most likely to vote for Brexit. Those with little chance of moving up tended to vote to leave the European Union (Elliot Major and Machin, 2018).
In December 2019, Boris Johnson's return to power extended a remarkable Parliamentary tradition: every Prime Minister since the end of the Second World War who has attended an English university has attended just one institution: Oxford. Johnson was one of 11 Etonians in the new Parliament.
Social mobility remained a popular concept among the populace despite growing scepticism about the openness of the UK. The crushing defeat for the Labour Party, delivered by many working-class constituencies in the Midlands and the north of England, came after it vowed to focus on improving social justice rather than social mobility, helping the many not just the few.9 The voters disagreed: they wanted both.
Johnson proclaimed this new administration was the ‘people's government'. The Cabinet included a record number of ministers from ethnic minority backgrounds. Yet, in other respects, government ministers looked very familiar. Just under two-thirds (64 per cent) were privately educated. Like all the Prime Ministers before him, Johnson vowed ‘to level up opportunity around the country…closing the opportunity gap'.
In 2020, the coronavirus pandemic swept across the world, triggering a global recession. As with previous downturns, the most vulnerable workers, those on short-term contracts with low pay and minimal benefits, stood to suffer the most (Adams-Prassl et al., 2020). Yet the crisis also saw unprecedented moves from the government to support employees most at risk, amid growing recognition of the role played by key public sector workers. Many asked whether the collective response to the pandemic would usher in a new cohesive era for the country. Could it turn away from a reliance on global markets towards a more self-sufficient economy that would be more equitable for all its citizens? Or would the crisis undermine the Prime Minister's promise to invest in the disadvantaged areas which had swept him to power?
Notes
1 The registry data are far from ideal as they include only couples married in Anglican churches, an increasingly unrepresentative sample towards the end of the nineteenth century.
2 Macmillan said: ‘Go round the country, go to the industrial towns, go to the farms and you will see a state of prosperity such as we have never had in my lifetime – nor indeed in the history of this country.'
3 In later work, Crafts notes that while growth was relatively high in the UK in the 1950s and 1960s, the country fell behind competitor nations which grew much faster in the golden age period.
4 The phrase ‘a rising tide will lift all boats’ was used by President John F. Kennedy in 1963.
5 Room at the Top is a 1959 British film based on the novel of the same name by John Braine.
6 For more in-depth statistics see Elliot Major and Machin (2018).
7 Eyles and Machin (2019) study the new academies’ impact on pupil intake and performance.
8 Own calculations from General Household Survey (1980) and Labour Force Survey (2020).
9 ‘Social justice’ was seen as helping the many, not the few. Labour vowed to establish a Social Justice Commission instead of the Social Mobility Commission.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.