Social mobility and its enemies

an article from CentrePiece (Autumn 2018)

Increasingly it seems that the rich and poor of Britain are destined to stay on the same rungs of the economic or social ladder for successive generations. A new book by Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin calls for an alternative model of social mobility, one that develops all talents, not just academic, but vocational and creative too – and which creates opportunities across the whole country, not just in London.

[Here follows a picture of Davids Cameron and Beckham which I can't copy]

One David was born in a terraced house in East London, his father a kitchen fitter, his mother a hairdresser. The other David grew up in an idyllic village in the English countryside, his father a stockbroker, his mother the daughter of a baronet. The first David left school at 16 without any qualifications; the second studied at Eton and Oxford. One married an Essex girl; the other married the daughter of a wealthy aristocrat. Both Davids in their own way highlight Britain’s social mobility problem.

David Beckham’s meteoric rise is a rare occurrence: few children born to poor parents climb the income ladder of life.

Meanwhile, David Cameron continued a tradition that has seen successive generations of social elites retain their grip on the country’s most powerful jobs: he is descended from King William IV who ruled in the 1830s.

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