The side of social mobility that no politician will talk about: making rich-but-dim children downwardly mobile.
The side of social mobility that no politician will talk about: making rich-but-dim children downwardly mobile
The government will fail to meet its child poverty reduction targets by 2020, according to a new report from Alan Milburn’s social mobility and child poverty commission.
According to the report, “absolute child poverty increased by 300,000 between 2010-11 and 2012-13” and “independent experts expect child poverty to increase significantly over the next few years”.
This mirrors earlier findings by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), which forecast last year that coalition cuts and employment trends would mean that, by 2020, a quarter of all children (3.4 million) will be living in poverty, reversing reductions in child poverty that took place under Labour between 2000 and 2010.
This is incredibly damning. No one in our society ought to live in poverty, but it is particularly callous to inflict it on people – children – who play no part in the employment choices of their parents.
New Labour has been criticised for many things, but its record on child poverty was an impressive one.
Both absolute and relative income poverty fell significantly among children and pensioners under New Labour. This was not simply the result of a booming economy, but was a consequence of spending decisions taken by successive Labour governments. Tony Blair promised to end child poverty within a generation and Gordon Brown pledged ‘to end pensioner poverty in our country’.
These goals were reflected in where government money was spent.
Between 1997-98 and 2010-11, there was an £18 billion annual increase in spending on benefits for families with children and an £11 billion annual increase on benefits for pensioners by 2010-11. As the IFS points out, “…child and pensioner poverty would either have stayed the same or risen…had there not been these big spending increases”.
Due to spending decisions taken by the current government, these impressive gains are now being trashed. That isn’t the opinion of soft-centered charities or left-wing activists, this is the verdict of the government’s social mobility ‘tsar’ Alan Milburn as well as the ultra-orthodox IFS.
Today’s report includes 12 recommendations for the government to adopt so as to increase social mobility over the next decade. One reason the report is so damning is that child poverty, as well as being a moral scandal, has an egregious effect on social mobility.
The reason for this should be obvious: poor children are usually deprived of the things which make school life a little easier, such as books and a place at home to study – not to mention private tutoring. Doors which may easily open for the rest of us are always bolted more tightly when there is a lack of money at home.
So what should we take from the report then? That child poverty is bad? Sure. That it damages social mobility? Definitely.
But there is surely another issue at play here. It isn’t just child poverty that restricts social mobility; inequality does too. As the American author Christopher Hayes puts it in his excellent book The Twilight of the Elites, “over time, a society will grow both more unequal and less mobile as those who ascend its heights create means of preserving and defending their privilege and find ways to pass it on across generations”.
This raises a much bigger problem with the social mobility agenda: the inequality it produces ultimately subverts the mechanisms of mobility. No one in the political establishment today believes in equality of outcome and everyone believes in equality of opportunity; yet genuine equality of opportunity (or meritocracy as it is sometimes known) is undermined by the unequal society that meritocrats revere.
The more unequal a society is the worse social mobility tends to be (Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland have much better levels of social mobility than Britain and the US) for the simple reason that the advantages of the parents almost always become the advantages of the children.
We can take two things from this: 1) Key to ‘unlocking’ social mobility is less inequality of outcome; 2) we need to start talking about making posh-but-dim children downwardly mobile.
Ed Miliband has touched briefly on the first issue but, like every other politician, will steer clear of the second as if it were a bad smell.
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23 Responses to “It isn’t just child poverty that limits social mobility; inequality does too”
NorthBrit
For obvious reasons, Ed Milliband has no interest in increasing downward mobility for the rich-but-dim.
Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas.
leftfootfwd
Please keep it civilised.
TheLondonBlogger
This item is so typical of most things that appear
on the alleged Left
in Britain
It is so ‘securely’ remote from the grounds!
As it is also ‘securely’ free from any contacts with the
concept of Rights
(except, in the general space around the piece, the word ‘right’
does appear but only to denote the Political Right).
The problem with this kind of detachment from Society and
the demonstrated detachment from the machinery of
Social deprivation is not confined o this one piece either.
Nor is it to be found in the Right-generated headlines
allegedly dissing the current electoral political acceptability
of Ed Miliband.
There is no such thing as “social mobility” in real life.
The universal, objective concept of freedom, rights must be
considered rather than the slogan of social mobility which is
more a charitable one rather than one based on recognition of true
human rights in the context of the founding values of the United Nations.
The ‘Left’ has been absent from the UK Political action for decades.
This is evident in the apologetic stance it takes on most issues.
Poverty is created as a directly openly and constantly set agenda.
Poverty cannot be created without active deliberate knowing
complicity by the so-called Labour local Councils.
Poverty is also daily created by the lower courts – where most judicial
stamps are pressed on corruptly conceived Poverty-Creating decrees the approval of the State.
And the “State”, as the DWP’s currently engaged main spin programme derived from the Murdoch Sun has been showing, is aggressively using the popular prejudices that are
“independent” manufactured and retailed (and planted in subliminal casual triggers) via the programmes like “Benefit Street” on C4.
So effective has the SUN-C4-DWP alliance been in damning the victims of Poverty-Creation that Deirdre Kelly the individual (aka “White Dee”) who was used as the “image” to demonise the victims has now begun to be shown as, allegedly and in effect, ‘come to her senses’ and has been strategically placed as a tool to damn her former “friends and co-claimants”.
The “Left” is absent from this arena.
Poverty is also ragingly created by the opportunists in “universities” and allied institutions where the idea o Rights is now totally a matter of description!
When certain “Labour” MPs act as fronters for the “Legal Aid Lawyers” lobbies they do so by claiming that “the vulnerable” and “the disadvantaged” would be “deprived of legal representation if legal aid is cut as proposed” .
In their role as agents of the legally aided lawyers’ lobby these MPs and their counterparts, typified by certain overly-hyped and careerists in the House of Lords, they add to the disparity and the disadvantage as they heap more untruths against the targets of the Poverty Stamps proceeded via the “lawyered” system.
treborc1
Well that is useful.
GhostofJimMorrison
Between 1997-98 and 2010-11, there was an £18 billion annual increase in spending on benefits for families with children
In other words, state-sponsored poverty. And it is not the responsibility of the state to ensure poorer children have school books and a suitable environment to study; it is the responsibility of the parent. Buying fewer cigarettes and scratch cards might help pay for books. And don’t tell me I’m generalising, I see it every day.