Why is social mobility so bad in the UK?
So why is UK mobility lower than in most countries, and how come it became worse over time? At least two factors are important. First, income inequality has risen very rapidly in Britain since the late 1970s. Consequently, the number of pounds sterling separating people on each rung of the social ladder has become wider, making the ladder that much harder to climb. This may also explain the bad American picture on social mobility, as the gap between rich and poor is much larger in the US than in Europe. Second, and contrary to many people’s prior expectations, the expansion of higher education that occurred from the late 1980s onwards disproportionately benefited people from richer families. It therefore acted to reinforce and strengthen already existent inequalities and restricted social mobility. The gap between the richest and poorest in society has opened up significantly since the late 1970s. Figure 2 shows how one measure of inequality, the ‘Gini coefficient’, rose, especially in
