Our parental inheritance

Philip Larkin's famous hypothesis - They fuck you up, your mum and dad.They may not mean to, but they do - has been corroborated by some recent happiness research, in two ways.

Andrew Clark and Emanuela D'Angelo show that our life satisfaction depends not just upon our own socioeconomic status, but also that of our parents. Other things equal, if two people have the same jobs and incomes, the one who is upwardly mobile is happier than the one who is in the same job as their parents.

This is probably because our parents' income acts as a reference group. Having rich parents raises our expectations and so makes us less content with a high income, whereas if you come form a poor home merely being able to pay the leccy bill without worry makes you happy.

But there's a second way in which our parents incomes affect our attitudes in adulthood, find Clark and D'Angelo. Our political attitudes, they find, "are some kind of weighted average of the individual’s own status and parents’ social status." Yes, richer people are more likely to vote Tory and oppose redistribution and state ownership. But for a given income, the upwardly mobile are more likely to be lefties. "Doing better than one’s parents makes individuals more favourable to redistribution and more pro-public sector", they say. This could be because people who have done well from poor homes are more aware that state education, welfare benefits and the NHS can help people prosper in later life; Caitlin Moran's columns seem to be about little else.

If we put these two findings together, say Clark and D'Angelo, the implication is that "greater upwards mobility should make for satisfied Left-wingers." Which might help explain why there's so little of it.

Comments

[IAmWilbur]

"for a given income, the upwardly mobile are more likely to be lefties." I find this interesting -- it falsifies a hypothesis I've been toying with that the upwardly mobile are more likely to believe that the status quo allows for equality of opportunity so lean to the right.

[Socialism In One Bedroom]

"for a given income, the upwardly mobile are more likely to be lefties"

How would you measure that? I thought the whole of the ideology of Thatcherism was built on the myth of the upwardly mobile? Did I dream all that? I say myth because if you look at social mobility during the Thatcher years it was actually near the bottom of the international league table.

I would also point out that rich parents bring more to the table than the right 'outlook' and 'attitude', they also bring connections and purchasing power.

[pablopatito]

Children learn their values from their parents. So the children of working class parents are more likely to be lefties and the political leanings you develop in your teens are unlikely to change much in adulthood, regardless of how wealthy you become.

I'm not sure I learnt that much from my parents. I think it was mainly my obsession with Billy Bragg and Bruce Springsteen during my early years that defined my political values. They were largely set in stone when I was 13 and haven't changed much since. I really don't think my status has much influence on me.

[Luis Enrique]

I am surprised by that - I would have guessed that successful people who feel self-made would be more likely to think, if I can do it, so can others, and be less likely to favour redistribution, relative to those who started poor and stay poor.

[Keith]

I often wonder how left or right is constructed in this kind of debate.

The parties seeking election can have very different policy platforms at different periods or in different countries. Yet they are still called left or right or liberal as if all political parties or movements kept exactly the same platform.

[Jörg]

The tendency of the socially mobile to change their political views rather than their political affiliations is the missing link explaining party-platform evolution.