Social mobility and child poverty in unequal Britain
The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission’s first annual report, State of the Nation 2013, sets out detailed evidence and analysis on child poverty and social mobility. Despite the commitment and efforts of Government and others, the scale and depth of progress are unequal to the social, economic and fiscal challenges. The Commission calls for a renewed drive and new approaches to overcoming poverty and enhancing mobility.
Child poverty and social mobility are two sides of the same coin: the more children in poverty, the lower the level of social mobility we are likely to achieve. The report offers significant evidence to show how, over decades, our society has become wealthier but not fairer:
- one in six UK children, 2.3 million in total, live in relative income poverty, higher than Denmark, Sweden and Germany; poorer children fall behind in development before the age of 3 and never catch up;
- disadvantage and advantage cascade down the generations – the association between incomes of fathers and sons is twice as strong here as in Finland, Australia and Canada;
- social divisions are various – from spatial divisions to divides in earnings and education by ethnicity and gender, with over 60 per cent of low paid workers being female;
- poverty is ‘dynamic’ – today’s young people face the prospect of having lower living standards as adults than those of their parents.
The problems are deep rooted and come at a socio-economic price: child poverty costs £1,000 per taxpayer per year; improving social mobility by raising all children to average levels of educational attainment could contribute £56 billion a year by 2050.
Drawing on historical and international evidence, the Commission identifies features of societies with lower child poverty and higher social mobility and offers these as benchmarks against which to assess developments in the UK:
- adults supported to be warm authoritative parents actively engaged in their children’s education, particularly in the early years;
- high-quality, affordable and universal childcare that enables more parents to work and helps improve children’s early development;
- high-quality schools and teachers relentlessly focused on raising standards, building social skills and closing attainment gaps;
- clear accessible routes into work for those pursuing both vocational and academic education and training;
- plenty of high-quality jobs throughout the country with good progression opportunities and fair recruitment processes;
- family incomes that are supported by decent levels of pay and the right incentives to find employment and work enough hours;
- society becoming less unequal over time and individuals with little wealth being supported to build assets.