A new report shows that hourly wages of workers whose parents had a tertiary degree are significantly higher, on average, than hourly wages of workers whose parents have lesser qualifications.
The world is your oyster — you’ll need to top it up yourself.
PA/Peter Byrne
In some significant ways, Americans have fewer avenues for advancement than the characters of Mad Men do.
The growing inequality that triggered the Occupy protests, such as this one in Bennington, Vermont, is now registering as an issue with politicians at the highest level.
Wikimedia Commons/Daniel Case
The opportunity gap between well-off and poor American children is vast and, more alarmingly still, it is growing. Some political leaders are starting to take note of the grim consequences.
Modern day American poverty: Slab City, CA
Eric Thayer/Reuters
The expansion of higher education in the UK has been driven by a political desire to increase economic growth and to promote social mobility at the same time by drawing more graduates from a larger pool…
Lucinda Platt, London School of Economics and Political Science
As they reach the end of primary school, the UK’s children face persistent inequalities in their cognitive development. New findings from the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), a survey of children born between…
Employable, but lacking employment options.
michaeljung/Shutterstock
The number of professional and middle-class managerial jobs has shrunk, according to a new study by researchers at Oxford University. This is bad news for Britain’s graduates and represents a worrying…
Helping hands.
Mother and child via Nadezhda1906/Shutterstock
Improve the school results of children from poor backgrounds and they will escape poverty in adulthood. This is the way the UK government believes it can alleviate child poverty, built on a belief in the…
University is often seen as a route to social mobility, providing the chance for all students to get higher status and better paid jobs no matter what kind of school they went to. But in our new research…
Happy parenting won’t necessarily get you into Oxbridge.
Parenting via Goodluz/Shutterstock
Britain is quickly turning into a nation characterised by an obscene and unsustainable wealth gap, according to a new report on social mobility. Yet behind the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission’s…
Although the broader economy might be starting to look up, the prospects for social mobility in the UK are not. The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission has just released its State of the Nation…
In search of better schools.
Primary desk via luminaimages/Shutterstock
Why are pupils from disadvantaged families more often found studying in poorly performing schools? Is it the choices their parents make, or are they not able to get into better ones? Perhaps families are…
The eloquent way to get ahead in life.
Public speaking via Camilo Torres/Shutterstock
A recent report confirms that the alumni of British “public schools” still control politics and many top professions. One reason those people are so successful in public life is, of course, that their…
You’ll do better than me son.
Mother and child, via Lakov Filimonov/Shutterstock
It is generally accepted by all political parties and most of the media that social mobility in the UK is low compared to other countries, and worsening over time. These “facts” appeared in the manifestos…
For decades, child-care advice claimed that motherhood was a natural quality: the task of the parenting expert, it was claimed, was to help mothers to realise their “natural” mothering potential. In practice…
Half a century ago, the world of private education was under serious pressure. Threatened by an emboldened political left keen to abolish private schools or incorporate them into the state sector, and…