It seems that the current ad nauseam repetition on declining social mobility is entirely based on comparing the 1958 birth cohort with the 1970 birth cohort.
My basis for saying that the the political uses made of the studies are misplaced is a belief (maybe hypothesis) that most of any intergenerational social mobility is captured by the time the children reach 25 - occurring over the age 15-25 decade.
The 1958 cohort reached 15 in 1973, before the precipitate collapse in the youth labour market, and 25 in 1983. If they had succeeded in getting careers before 1979, they would have been less affected by the Howe recession than people entering the labour market later.
The 1970 cohort reached 15 in 1985 and 25 in 1995. Those who went through the Youth Training Scheme (a large proportion) would have benefitted from a programme that evaluations show achieved any positive effect on job outcomes by depressing aspirations (the reservation wage). Others undertook further learning as educational participation was rising - but whether this was a displacement activity or in relation to a labour market where unnecessary credentials were demanded to sift through masses of applicants is another matter.
My conclusion is that the experience of the 1958 cohort at crucial periods is of a Wilson/Callaghan generation and that of the 1970 cohort is of a Thatcher generation.
If one expects social mobility to take place between the ages of 25 and 35, and not between 15 and 25, then the 1958 cohort becomes a Thatcher/Major cohort and the 1970 becomes a Major/Blair cohort.
Other people are using these studies to attack comprehensive education. The 1958 cohort reached 11 in 1969 - after the full introduction of CSEs as the first general qualification available to those not entered for O levels and in the full flood of comprehensivisation when teachers and the educational establishment saw comprehensivisation as exciting and a way of serving those ill-served before. The 1970 cohort reached 11 in 1981 after the political establishment (both parties) had turned on the educational system as ill-serving the country and pupils - although the 1970 cohort would not have been affected by the National Curriculum.
If we had a 1980 cohort and a 1990 cohort (and I think I remember that at least one was planned and dropped by the Thatcher Government) we would know more about later social mobility. The Millenium cohort are still too young to do more than look at pre-school and starting school attainment by parental background. In due course this cohort will tell us more about the effects of the vast educational changes since the 1980s on social mobility.
-----Original Message-----
From: email list for Radical Statistics
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Paul Lambert
Sent: 27 June 2007 09:09
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Social mobility
(But the original subject line of this mail was 'Re: Message from
'listowner'').
Allan Reese wrote:
> How about a statistical discussion based on:
> * UK educational attainment has risen in recent decades
> * UK social mobility has decreased in recent decades
> * education is the key to social mobility (David Cameron,
> interview 25 June 2007).
It's not completely clear which of the statements above are being
asserted, and which are being mocked!
I'm sure most on this list will recognise that the issue of trends in
educational effects hinges on the distribution of educational
attainments within generations (e.g. school leaving cohorts).
To compare, for example, with an analogy from Cricket (I know the below
isn't factually spot on, but it will do..)
The England team's one-day runs averages continue to rise
The England's team's international one-day ranking continues to fall
The England coach insists the key to one-day success is scoring runs
What a fool the coach is (that last statement _is_ intended to be mocked
- obviously, runs remain key, it's just that you must also account for
the number of other teams' runs..).
I'm sure the poster is probably aware of all this, but stated as above,
David Cameron's conclusions are not necessarily out of step: education
could still be critical to helping individuals achieve 'social mobility'
(it would just depend on how it is directed).
In fact, sociologists often analyse longer term trends in the effects of
education, but very rarely by standardising within the distribution of
the relevant generation (e.g. school leaving cohorts). They should - but
there are only a couple of applications that I know of that have done
this is, one being:
Harman, J., Graham, H., Francis, B., & Inskip, H. M. (2006).
Socioeconomic gradients in smoking among young women: A British survey.
Social Science and Medicine, 63(11), 2791-2780.
Then, there's another very problematic statement in the claims above,
the assertion that social mobility has decreased in recent decades.
I've heard this statement repeated ad nauseum over the last few years.
I've noted details of speeches were David Cameron, Tony Blair and Ruth
Kelly (when education minister) have all asserted this. I've heard
countless media commentaries on the 'collapsing' of social mobility in
Britain; even just this morning, the so-called decline in social
mobility in Britain was the subject of a 10 minute special investigation
on Radio 4..
All of this is important because it ignores critical but somewhat
inconvenient empirical evidence: social mobility has increased steadily
(though only very slightly) in Britain over the last 200 years, and it
continues to increase. I'm convinced of this myself, because I worked on
and off for 5 years on the analysis of social mobility trends with
colleagues, through the meta-analysis of 32 micro-social datasets - we
wrote our findings up at:
Lambert, P. S., Prandy, K., & Bottero, W. (2007). By Slow Degrees: Two
Centuries of Social Reproduction and Mobility in Britain. Sociological
Research Online, 12(1). http://www.socresonline.org.uk/12/1/prandy.html
It's true that there is a lot of debate in sociology over social
mobility trends, but most recent publications have concluded either no
significant change in social mobility over time, or a small increase. To
my knowledge, it is only one recent group of studies, by Blanden et al
(see above for citations and discussion) which claim otherwise, that
social mobility has declined. These are very sound studies, but I'm
convinced that they are misleading about the nature of longer term
trends in social mobility, because they focus on income mobility from
very recent cohorts. These studies nevertheless have been tremendously
influential. In my view because they tell a version of events that many
like to hear for political motivations, regardless of any contrary
evidence - a salad bar model for choosing research evidence to suit your
views, perhaps on a par with other great misrepresentations of evidence
such as MMR and autism....
Paul
--
Dr Paul S. Lambert
Department of Applied Social Science (Rm 3S16)
Stirling University
> -----Original Message-----
> From: email list for Radical Statistics
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Allan Reese (Cefas)
> Sent: 25 June 2007 11:16
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Message from 'listowner'
>
> I agree with the listowner, having deleted several messages
> each day for the past week.
>
> How about a statistical discussion based on:
> * UK educational attainment has risen in recent decades
> * UK social mobility has decreased in recent decades
> * education is the key to social mobility (David Cameron,
> interview 25 June 2007).
>
>
>
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