Britain’s younger generation is at risk of being worse off than their parents’ generation, warns social mobility tsar
Britain’s younger generation is at risk of being worse off than their parents’ generation, the UK’s social mobility tsar has warned.
Alun Francis, chair of the Social Mobility Commission, claimed younger graduates were beginning to feel ‘the social mobility story doesn’t work anymore’.
He pointed to an ‘uneveness’ in the UK’s economic geography where ‘everything is so loaded towards London and the Home Counties’.
But these are areas where ‘nobody can afford to live’ and younger people were ‘starting to get disillusioned’ by being unable to buy a house, Mr Francis added.
His warning came as new research by the Social Mobility Commission found those raised near London, Manchester and Edinburgh have the best chance of getting a professional job – no matter what social background they’re from.
Britain’s younger generation is at risk of being worse off than their parents’ generation, the UK’s social mobility tsar has warned
Alun Francis, chair of the Social Mobility Commission, pointed to an ‘uneveness’ in the UK’s economic geography where ‘everything is so loaded towards London and the Home Counties’
New research found those raised near London (pictured), Manchester and Edinburgh have the best chance of getting a professional job – no matter what social background they’re from
Mr Francis replaced Katharine Birbalsingh – dubbed ‘Britain’s strictest headteacher’ – as chair of the advisory body following her resignation at the beginning of this year.
She left the role after admitting her controversial public comments were ‘doing more harm than good’.
Speaking to the Financial Times ahead of the publication of the Commission’s annual State of the Nation report, Mr Francis said a ‘few Dick Whittington stories’ did not mean the country was fair.
‘The notion that this generation is going to be better off than the last generation is actually in question,’ he told the newspaper.
‘That has to be a priority for us. We have to ask the question: “are those at the bottom going to be better off than their parents’ generation?”‘
The Commission’s report found that children growing up in or around London, Manchester and Edinburgh are more likely to end up in jobs such as medicine, law or become business chief executives than people of the same socio-economic background from other areas.
Young people also tend to have better prospects for higher education, occupation and earnings if they grew up around London, even after their socio-economic background is taken into account, the research suggested.
But, alongside the positive findings for people’s prospects in and around London, Manchester and Edinburgh, the chances of unemployment, economic inactivity and lower working-class employment were also found to be high among young people who grew up in the same areas.
On this point, Mr Francis said: ‘The data shows why it’s just as important to look within areas as it is between them.
‘And, despite popular narrative, there isn’t a clear cut north-south divide.’
While the report showed geographical inequalities across the country, there is no simple pattern of well-off and badly-off areas, researchers said.
The report suggested that, despite girls outperforming boys throughout their school years, women went on to become less likely to experience so-called upward occupational mobility by moving from a lower working-class background to a higher professional job – 8% of women compared with 14% of men.
The commission said young people from a Chinese background outperform all other ethnicities in terms of education, employment and earnings – even if they are born into disadvantage.
While students eligible for free school meals – generally accepted as an indicator of deprivation – from black African and Pakistani backgrounds outperform white British students at GCSE, the commission said this does not necessarily translate into better employment opportunities.
They said Pakistani people are less likely to be in a professional job and more likely to be unemployed than white British people from the same socio-economic background.
But people of Indian and Chinese backgrounds had significantly higher chances of so-called long-range upward mobility than their white British peers, the researchers added.
The commission used data from the Office for National Statistics, including the Labour Force Survey, as well as other academic research for its report.
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