To What Extent is Social Mobility in the UK a Serious Issue

This article examines the state of social mobility in the UK, focusing on the challenges and opportunities it presents. It discusses the impact of social mobility on different demographics, such as gender, disability, and ethnicity. The article also explores the drivers of social mobility and the potential risks and opportunities it poses. References are provided for further reading.

To What Extent is Social
Mobility in the UK a
Serious Issue

Table of Contents
The state of Social Mobility in the UK..................................................................................1
References........................................................................................................................................3

The state of Social Mobility in the UK
Social mobility means breaking link among parental background of the individuals along
with opportunities for reaching their complete potential in context of occupation and income. It
is associated with opportunities for generation as well as accessing opportunities in fairer manner
irrespective of the background (Christie, 2016). Social mobility across UK is increasing and this
involves period of both absolute social class as well as increased income. United Kingdom has
low performing country in context of income mobility. The report highlights manner in which
professional occupations are dependent on the careers of the parents, the children belonging to
professional background is more than 80% and generally goes into the professional career like
medicines or law rather than privileged to the peers. The commission have highlighted double
disadvantage associated with gender, disability and ethnicity. Furthermore, women belonging to
working-class backgrounds that are being paid 35% less in comparison to affluent male peers in
their professional occupations. In addition to this, one of the five people that have disabilities
from the working class backgrounds enters into the higher occupations.
In addition to this, the technological alterations leads to further threaten disparities. The
alterations related with automation these divides might create worse impact on the employees
who are not highly qualified as well as have salaries and are at higher risk when their liabilities
will be automated (Hoskins and Barker, 2020). As per the 2019 report, there has to be expansion
for free childcare across England and this have been extended further to the disadvantaged
families by highlighting closure of multiple children’s centres. In addition to this, it is shocking
that near around 45% childcare workers are tax credits or benefits as per reports. Further, the
commission have urged government for expansion their existent additional funding for pupils in
the school that are of age 16 to 19 years for higher education.
There are three drivers for social mobility that involves, fair access, capability
development and economic opportunities. There have been certain progress in the years but there
are also certain obstacles associated with this, they are specified beneath:
Educational gaps are there in higher education as students belonging to low socioeconomic
backgrounds do not have opportunity to visit the university (Li, 2016)
.
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 Real wage growth along with income inequalities have grown and millennial earns less
in comparison to their parents.
 Access to job opportunities and education have become ongoing issue. Even in case
students study the same subject and in same college then also they earn less than 10%.
Without taking the adequate steps, the social mobility might worse the impact that will be
created. For an instance, in future perspective there will be a change in structural alterations
within the labour market and loss of jobs. It is anticipated that near about 15 million jobs across
UK will be risk by automation and this accounts to 63% of jobs will be impacted to large or
medium extent (The State of Social Mobility in the UK, 2017). This clearly states that social
mobility have both positive as well as negative impact. Positive comprises of enhanced demands
for having STEM jobs through which skills can be grown. Negative comprises of job losses that
takes place with disproportionate routine jobs.
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References
Books and Journals
Christie, F., 2016. Careers guidance and social mobility in UK higher education: practitioner
perspectives. British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, 44(1), pp.72-85.
Hoskins, K. and Barker, B., 2020. The Contemporary Social Mobility and Equality Policy
Context: Framing the Problem. In STEM, Social Mobility and Equality (pp. 19-60).
Palgrave Pivot, Cham.
Li, Y., 2016. Social mobility, social network and subjective well-being in the UK. Contemporary
Social Science, 11(2-3), pp.222-237.
Online
The State of Social Mobility in the UK. 2017. [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/BCGSocial-Mobility-report-
full-version_WEB_FINAL-1.pdf>.
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