The only way is up

Whatever happened to social mobility? One of the most disturbing themes to emerge from the grammar schools debate and the current rash of Blair retrospectives is the discovery that even under a supposedly progressive Prime Minister, our society is holding too many people back rather than propelling them forward.

And the reasons behind this reveal many deep-seated differences between the thinking of Cameron’s Conservatives and that of Brown’s Labour party.

Social mobility is falling. Someone born into the poorest quarter of society 50 years ago had a greater chance of working their way up to a higher economic group than a young person today. And it’s getting worse. We have expanded the number of people in higher education. The number of young people in the richest fifth of society who complete a degree has increased from 9 per cent in 1981 to 46 per cent today. Yet among people in the poorest fifth, the increase has been from 6 per cent taking a degree to a pathetic 9 per cent  today.

The people at the bottom of our society are being left further and further behind. Despite a decade of growth and falling unemployment there are over 400,000 more people in severe poverty than when Labour came to office. And the most recent figures released by the government show that the incomes of the poorest are actually falling year on year. We know that poverty rates have not budged among disabled people, often the poorest due to the double whammy of difficulty in finding work and the costs invariably caused by disability. No wonder the chief executive of Barnardo’s called the latest poverty figures a ‘moral disgrace’.

The attitude of the parties to this problem of stalled social mobility is revealing.