Social mobility and equality

Social mobility and economic equality are complements, not substitutes. That's the message of a paper presented by Robin Naylor at this week's Royal Economic Society annual conference.
He and his colleagues show that there is less social mobility in the US and UK than in the Nordic countries, where incomes are more equal.
In the US, 40% of the sons of fathers in the bottom quintile of earners (as of 1974) were themselves in the bottom  quintile in the late 1990s. That compares to just 25-28% in the Nordic countries.
Conversely, downward mobility is  lower in the UK and US than in the Nordic region. Only 10% of the sons of top quintile earners in the UK and US end up in the bottom quintile. That compares to around 15% in the Nordic countries.
For me, this raises several questions. Is this evidence that the UK and US are less meritocratic than Nordic countries? Or is merit in the UK and US more heriditary than in the Nordic area? If so, why? What is the transmission mechanism here? Is it that education  systems create inherited inequalities in the UK and US, by ensuring that rich parents get better schooling for their children? Or is the problem more cultural, and so less solveable by policy - say because UK and US parents inculculate attitutes towards work and education that keep the rich rich and the poor poor? Is the heritability of wealth and poverty related to the importance of "soft skills"? Does this research strengthen the case for greater redistributive taxation in the UK and US? Or is social mobility not desirable anyway?
* The paper's not on the web yet. But an early version is here.

Comments

[Charlie Whitaker]

Well spotted. I'd like to follow up on this: I've noticed that many people believe that social mobility is not only a substitute for social equality but is also a morally superior arrangement. My feeling is that this is wrong, and that the reason has something to do with the unhappiness produced by the constant grinding of the mill that high social mobility entails, but I can't yet claim to have a coherent argument.

Of course, if low social mobility and high income inequality go hand in hand, as this paper suggests they might, then the argument is moot. But I think it's still an interesting argument.

[Charlie Whitaker]

And I forgot to add: the New York Times had a good feature on social mobility in the US a few months ago: http://www.nytimes.com/pages/national/class/index.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1145397971-CuzZqtkfS+dn3aC5CkZb0A

[chris]

Charlie - I agree that social mobility/meritocracy is a bad thing.
Many of the reasons why were described by Michael Young in the Rise of the Meritocracy (he coined the word) - it leads to a breakdown of social solidarity, smugness among the elite and despair among the poor, as they believe they deserve their fates.
I'd add (as someone who has been upwardly mobile) that upward mobility merely produces isolation, as you'll never fit in to the middle class if you come from a poor background.
What's more, you can never fully escape one disadvantage of a lower class background - you die earlier than the rich even if you escape your class:
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/article.asp?ID=1302&Pos=1&ColRank=2&Rank=224

[ManBearPig]

Stumbling and Mumbling's recent post on social mobility and equality draws