essay on education and social mobility

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School Is for Social Mobility

By John N. Friedman

Mr. Friedman is an economist at Brown whose work focuses on how to use big data to improve life outcomes.

America is often hailed as a land of opportunity, a place where all children, no matter their family background, have the chance to succeed. Data measuring how low-income children tend to fare in adulthood, however, suggest this may be more myth than reality.

Less than one in 13 children born into poverty in the United States will go on to hold a high-income job in adulthood; the odds are far longer for Black men born into poverty, at one in 40 .

Education is the solution to this lack of mobility. There are still many ways in which the current education system generates its own inequities, and many of these have been exacerbated by Covid-19 closures. But the pandemic also revealed a potential path forward by galvanizing support for education funding at levels rarely seen before. With the right level of investment, education can not only provide more pathways out of poverty for individuals, but also restore the equality of opportunity that is supposed to lie at America’s core.

It is certainly not a new idea that education can change a child’s life trajectory. Almost everyone has some formative school memory — a teacher with whom everything made sense, an art project that opened new doors or a sports championship that bonded teammates for life.

But what is new is the torrent of research studies using “big data” to show the power of education for shaping children’s trajectories, especially over the long term. In one study, for example, my co-authors and I found that students who were randomly assigned to higher-quality classrooms earned substantially more 20 years later, about $320,000 over their lifetimes. And it’s not only the early grades that matter; research suggests the quality of education in later grades may be even more important for long-term outcomes, as children’s brains don’t lock in key neural pathways for advanced reasoning skills until well into their teenage years.

Education changes lives in ways that go far beyond economic gains. The data show clearly that children who get better schooling are healthier and happier adults, more civically engaged and less likely to commit crimes . Schools not only teach students academic skills but also noncognitive skills, like grit and teamwork, which are increasingly important for generating social mobility. Even the friendships that students form at school can be life-altering forces for social mobility, because children who grow up in more socially connected communities are much more likely to rise up out of poverty.

Conversely, limited social mobility hurts not just these children but all of society. We are leaving a vast amount of untapped talent on the table by investing unequally in our children, and it’s at all of our expense.

Researchers have also used big data to uncover many specific education reforms that could lead to huge improvements. For instance, the evidence is clear that teachers are critical; my co-authors and I found that, when better teachers arrive at a school, the students in their classrooms earn around $50,000 more over each of their lifetimes. This adds up to $1.25 million for a class of 25 in just a single year of teaching.

Smaller classes and increased tutoring also lead to long-term gains for students. Charter schools have revealed a range of effective approaches as well, often to the benefit of some of society’s most disadvantaged children . Children also benefit from longer school days , greater access to special education and less aggressive cutoffs for holding students back a grade.

Given this rich body of evidence, why doesn’t our K-12 system already propel more low-income students to success? A big reason continues to be inadequate funding. Because schools raise a large share of revenue through local property taxes, high-income students often attend well-resourced schools while low-income students attend schools with more limited resources. Decades of reforms have made some progress reducing these funding gaps within certain states, but huge gaps remain both between states and between schools within districts. Even with additional resources, schools often do not invest in proven reforms like the ones I mentioned above, choosing other, less data-driven proposals or even using additional resources to reduce local property taxes rather than increase spending on education.

If our education system does not currently support equality of opportunity, would investing more simply throw good money after bad? No. Many studies show the gains in social mobility when states like Michigan and New Mexico have reduced funding disparities to invest more in disadvantaged students. These reforms have gone in the right direction, but we need much more: With many students facing larger barriers to success as a result of factors outside the educational system, even equality of average funding levels may not be sufficient to generate equality of opportunity.

The Covid pandemic highlighted and magnified the deep inequities in our education system. Many high-income students were able to limit their learning losses , but on average, low-income students stayed remote longer and lost more ground for each week of remote school. By one estimate, high-poverty schools in districts that were mostly remote experienced 50 percent more achievement loss than low-poverty ones during the 2020-21 school year alone.

But Covid also triggered a momentous policy response. K-12 schools received nearly $200 billion in funding across three federal stimulus bills, much of which was aimed at combating learning loss. This money also began to address structural barriers by supporting increased internet and device access in low-income communities, both urban and rural, and in other ways.

Educators also displayed extraordinary creativity in finding new methods to teach students and help them catch back up. For instance, teachers and school leaders are using technology to support kids by prioritizing learning acceleration over remediation. New research shows students cover twice as much ground if they keep moving forward, completing targeted review as needed to master new material, rather than simply repeating lessons they missed because of Covid.

The sad fact is that the learning gaps opened up by Covid are a small fraction of those that already existed before the pandemic, when, in some school districts, low-income students were two, three and even four grade levels behind . If the pandemic motivated $200 billion in spending, then we should be investing trillions over the next decade to address the broader inequality in our system. While many of these gaps are caused by disparities that exist outside the school system, education remains our best shot at narrowing them.

If politics is the art of the possible, perhaps the biggest silver lining of these past two years has been to redefine what is possible. It will take this kind of extensive effort — investing year after year with the same level of urgency that we used to confront the pandemic — to transform our schools into the engines of social mobility that they can be.

John N. Friedman ( @john_n_friedman ) is the chairman of the economics department at Brown University. He is also a founding co-director of Opportunity Insights .

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Thirteen Economic Facts about Social Mobility and the Role of Education

Thirteen Economic Facts About Social Mobility and the Role of Education - Full Policy Memo

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Michael greenstone, adam looney, jeremy patashnik, and muxin yu, the hamilton project mgaljpamythp michael greenstone, adam looney, jeremy patashnik, and muxin yu, the hamilton project.

June 26, 2013

22 min read

This Hamilton Project policy memo provides thirteen economic facts on the growth of income inequality and its relationship to social mobility in America; on the growing divide in educational opportunities and outcomes for high- and low-income students; and on the pivotal role education can play in increasing the ability of low-income Americans to move up the income ladder.

Read the full introduction »

It is well known that the income divide in the United States has increased substantially over the last few decades, a trend that is particularly true for families with children. In fact, according to Census Bureau data, more than one-third of children today are raised in families with lower incomes than comparable children thirty-five years ago. This sustained erosion of income among such a broad group of children is without precedent in recent American history. Over the same period, children living in the highest 5 percent of the family-income distribution have seen their families’ incomes double.

What is less well known, however, is that mounting evidence hints that the forces behind these divergent experiences are threatening the upward mobility of the youngest Americans, and that inequality of income for one generation may mean inequality of opportunity for the next. It is too early to say for certain whether the rise in income inequality over the past few decades has caused a fall in social mobility of the poor and those in the middle class—the first generation of Americans to grow up under this inequality is, on average, in high school—but the early signs are troubling.

Investments in education and skills, which are factors that increasingly determine outcomes in the job market, are becoming more stratified by family income. As income inequality has increased, wealthier parents are able to invest more in their children’s education and enrichment, increasing the already sizable difference in investment from those at the other end of the earnings distribution. This disparity has real and measurable consequences for the current generation of American children. Although cognitive tests of ability show little difference between children of high- and low-income parents in the first years of their lives, large and persistent differences start emerging before kindergarten. Among older children, evidence suggests that the gap between high- and low-income primary and secondary-school students has increased by almost 40 percent over the past thirty years.

These differences persist and widen into young adulthood and beyond. Just as the gap in K–12 test scores between high and low-income students is growing, the difference in college graduation rates between the rich and the poor is also growing. Although the college graduation rate among the poorest households increased by about 4 percentage points between those born in the early 1960s and those born in the early 1980s, over this same period, the graduation rate increased by almost 20 percentage points for the wealthiest households.

Given how important education and, in particular, a college degree are in the labor market, these trends give rise to concerns that last generation’s inequities will be perpetuated into the next generation and opportunities for upward social mobility will be diminished. The emphasis that American society places on upward mobility makes this alarming in and of itself. In addition, low levels of social mobility may ultimately shift public support toward policies to address such inequities, instead of toward policies intended to promote economic growth.

While the urgency of finding solutions to this challenge requires rethinking a broad range of social and economic policies, we believe that any successful approach will necessitate increasing the skills and human capital of Americans. Decades of research demonstrate that policies that improve the quality of and expand access to early-childhood, K–12, and higher education can be effective at ameliorating these stark differences in economic opportunities across households.

Indeed, making it easier and more affordable for low-income students to attend college has long been a vehicle for upward mobility. Over the past fifty years, policies that have increased access to higher education, from the GI Bill to student aid, have not only helped lift thousands of Americans into the middle class and beyond, but also have boosted the productivity, innovation, and resources of the American economy.

Fortunately, researchers are making rapid progress in identifying new approaches that complement or improve on long-standing federal aid programs to boost college attendance and completion among lower-income students. These new interventions, which include high school and college mentoring, targeted informational interventions, and behavioral approaches to nudge students into better outcomes, could form the basis of important new policies that aim to steer more students toward college.

A founding principle of The Hamilton Project’s economic strategy is that long-term prosperity is best achieved by fostering economic growth and broad participation in that growth. This principle is particularly relevant in the context of social mobility, wherein broad participation in growth can contribute to further growth by providing families with the ability to invest in their children and communities, optimism that their hard work and efforts will lead to success for them and their children, and openness to innovation and change that lead to new sources of economic growth.

In this spirit, we offer our “Thirteen Economic Facts about Social Mobility and the Role of Education.” In chapter 1, we examine the very different changes in income between American families at opposite ends of the income distribution over the last thirty-five years and the seemingly dominant role that a child’s family income plays in determining his or her future economic outcomes. In chapter 2, we provide evidence on the growing divide in the United States in educational opportunities and outcomes based on family income. In chapter 3, we explore the great potential of education to increase upward mobility for all Americans, with a special focus on what we know about how to increase college attendance and completion for low-income students.

Chapter 1: Inequality Is Rising against a Background of Low Social Mobility

Central to the American ethos is the notion that it is possible to start out poor and become more prosperous: that hard work—not simply the circumstances you were born into—offers real prospects for success. But there is a growing gap between families at the top and bottom of the income distribution, raising concerns about the ability of today’s disadvantaged to work their way up the economic ladder.

1. Family incomes have declined for a third of American children over the past few decades.

Although family income has increased by an average of 37 percent between 1975 and 2011, family incomes have actually declined for the poorest third of children.

Figure 1 illustrates the diverging fortunes of children based on their family’s income, as measured by the U.S. Census Bureau. Children in families at the top of the income distribution have experienced sizable gains in their families’ incomes and resources since 1975. Children living in the top 5 percent of families, for instance, have seen a doubling of their families’ incomes. But such gains have been more modest for children in the middle of the distribution, and children living in lower-income families have experienced outright declines in incomes. In fact, in 2011 the bottom 35 percent of children lived in families with lower reported incomes than comparable children thirty-six years earlier.

Because of widening disparities in the earnings of their parents and changes in family structure—particularly the increase in single-parent families—the family resources available to lesswell- off children are falling behind those available to their higher-income peers.

2. Countries with high income inequality have low social mobility.

Many are concerned that rising income inequality will lead to declining social mobility. Figure 2, recently coined “The Great Gatsby Curve,” takes data from several countries at a single point in time to show the relationship between inequality and immobility. Inequality is measured using Gini coefficients, a common metric that economists use to determine how much of a nation’s income is concentrated among the wealthy; social mobility is measured using intergenerational earnings elasticity, an indicator of how much children’s future earnings depend on the earnings of their parents.

Although, as the figure shows, higher levels of inequality are positively correlated with reductions in social mobility, we do not know whether inequality causes reductions in mobility. After all, there are many important factors that vary between countries that might explain this relationship. Nonetheless, figure 2 represents a provocative observation with potentially important policy ramifications.

What figure 2 makes clear is that, although most people think of the United States as the land of opportunity—where hard workers from any background can prosper—the reality is far less encouraging. In fact, in terms of both income inequality and social mobility, the United States is in the middle of the pack when compared to other nations, most of which are democratic countries with market economies.

3. Upward social mobility is limited in the United States.

While social mobility and economic opportunity are important aspects of the American ethos, the data suggest they are more myth than reality. In fact, a child’s family income plays a dominant role in determining his or her future income, and those who start out poor are likely to remain poor.

Figure 3 shows the chances that a child’s future earnings will place him in the lowest quintile (that is, the bottom 20 percent of the earnings distribution, shown by the green bars) or the highest quintile (that is, the top 20 percent of the distribution, purple bars) depending on where his parents fell in the distribution (from left to right on the figure, the lowest, middle, and highest quintiles). In a completely mobile society, all children would have the same likelihood of ending up in any part of the income distribution; in this case, all bars on figure 3 would be at 20 percent, denoted by the bold line.

The figure demonstrates that children of well-off families are disproportionately likely to stay well off and children of poor families are very likely to remain poor. For example, a child born to parents with income in the lowest quintile is more than ten times more likely to end up in the lowest quintile than the highest as an adult (43 percent versus 4 percent). And, a child born to parents in the highest quintile is five times more likely to end up in the highest quintile than the lowest (40 percent versus 8 percent). These results run counter to the historic vision of the United States as a land of equal opportunity.

Chapter 2: The United States Is Experiencing a Growing Divide in Educational Investments and Outcomes Based on Family Income

Although children of high- and low-income families are born with similar abilities, high-income parents are increasingly investing more in their children. As a result, the gap between high- and low-income students in K–12 test scores, college attendance and completion, and graduation rates is growing.

4. The children of high- and low-income families are born with similar abilities but different opportunities.

In examining the opportunity gap between high- and low-income children, it is important to begin at the beginning— birth. The evidence suggests that children of high- and low-income families start out with similar abilities but rapidly diverge in outcomes.

At the earliest ages, there is almost no difference in cognitive ability between high- and low-income individuals. Figure 4 shows the impact of a family’s socioeconomic status—a combination of income, education, and occupation—on the cognitive ability of infants between eight and twelve months of age, as measured in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey. Although it is obviously difficult to measure the cognitive ability of infants, this ECLS metric has been shown to be modestly predictive of IQ at age five (Fryer and Levitt 2013).

Controlling for age, number of siblings, race, and other environmental factors, the effects of socioeconomic status are small and statistically insignificant. A child born into a family in the highest socioeconomic quintile, for example, can expect to score only 0.02 standard deviations higher on a test of cognitive ability than an average child, while one born into a family in the lowest socioeconomic quintile can expect to score about 0.03 standard deviations lower—hardly a measurable difference and statistically insignificant. By contrast, other factors, such as age, gender, and birth order, have a greater impact on abilities at the earliest stages of life.

Despite similar starting points, by age four, children in the highest income quintile score, on average, in the 69th percentile on tests of literacy and mathematics, while children in the lowest income quintile score in the 34th and 32nd percentile, respectively (Waldfogel and Washbrook 2011). Research suggests that these differences arise largely due to factors related to a child’s home environment and family’s socioeconomic status (Fryer and Levitt 2004).

5. There is a widening gap between the investments that high- and low-income families make in their children.

Although we may all enter the world on similar footing, the deck is stacked against children born into low-income households. One significant consequence of growing income inequality is that, by historical standards, high-income households are spending much more on their children’s education than low-income households. Figure 5 shows enrichment expenditures—SAT prep, private tutors, computers, music lessons, and the like—by income level.

Over the past four decades, families at the top of the income ladder have increased spending in these areas dramatically, from just over $3,500 to nearly $9,000 per child per year (in constant 2008 dollars). By comparison, those at the bottom of the income distribution have increased their spending since the early 1970s from less than $850 to about $1,300. The difference is still stark: high-income families have gone from spending slightly more than four times as much as low-income families to nearly seven times more.

Parents of higher socioeconomic status invest not only more money in their children, but more time as well. On average, mothers with a college degree spend 4.5 more hours each week engaging with their children than mothers with only a high school diploma or less (Guryan, Hurst, and Kearney 2008). This means that, among other things, by age three, children of parents who are professionals have vocabularies that are 50 percent larger than those of children from working-class families, and 100 percent larger than those of children whose families receive welfare, disparities that some researchers ascribe to differences in how much parents engage and speak with their children. By the time they are three, children born to parents who are professionals have heard about 30 million more words than children born to parents who receive welfare (Hart and Risley 1995).

6. The achievement gap between high- and low-income students has increased.

Disparities in what parents can invest in their children—whether time or money—appear to have important consequences for children’s success in school. While many factors play a role in shaping scholastic achievement, family income is one of the most persistent and significant. In fact, the income achievement gap—the role that wealth plays in educational attainment—has been increasing over the past five decades. By comparing test results of children from families at the 90th income percentile to those of children from families at the 10th percentile, researchers have found that the gap has grown by about 40 percent over the past thirty years (Reardon 2011).

Figure 6 shows that the income achievement gap as estimated for students born in 2001 is over 1.2 standard deviations. To put this in perspective, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, an average student advances between 1.2 and 1.5 standard deviations between fourth and eighth grade. The achievement gap between high- and low-income students, then, is on par with the gap between eighth graders and fourth graders.

This growing test-score gap mirrors the diverging parental investments of high- and low-income families (figure 5). As with parental investment, the test scores of low-income students have shown modest gains over the past few decades, while those of high-income students have shown large increases. The gap between high- and low-income students, therefore, is not an instance of the poor doing worse while the wealthy are doing better; rather, it is that students from wealthier families are pulling away from their lower-income peers.

7. College graduation rates have increased sharply for wealthy students but stagnated for low-income students.

College graduation rates have increased dramatically over the past few decades, but most of these increases have been achieved by high-income Americans. Figure 7 shows the change in graduation rates for individuals born between 1961 and 1964 and those born between 1979 and 1982. The graduation rates are reported separately for children in each quartile of the income distribution.

In every income quartile, the proportion graduating from college increased, but the size of that increase varied considerably. While the highest income quartile saw an 18 percentage-point increase in the graduation rate between these birth cohorts, the lowest income quartile saw only a 4 percentage-point increase.

This graduation-rate gap may have important implications for social mobility and inequality. Given the importance of a college degree in today’s labor market, rising disparities in college completion portend rising disparities in outcomes in the future.

8. High-income families dominate enrollment at America’s selective colleges.

The gap between high- and low-income groups in college outcomes extends beyond college graduation rates. Students from higher-income families also apply to and enroll in moreselective colleges. Figure 8 reports the percent of students at more- and less-selective schools that come from families in the top and bottom quartiles of the socioeconomic status distribution (a combination of parental income, education, and occupation).

The figure demonstrates that the most-competitive colleges are attended almost entirely by students from higher–socioeconomic status households. Indeed, the more competitive the institution, the greater the percentage of the student body that comes from the top quartile, and the smaller the percentage from the bottom quartile. At institutions ranked as “most competitive”—those with more-selective admissions and that require high grades and SAT scores— the wealthiest students out-populate the poorest students by a margin of fourteen to one (Carnevale and Strohl 2010). By contrast, at institutions ranked as “less-competitive” and “noncompetitive,” the lowest–socioeconomic status students are over-represented.

Chapter 3: Education Can Play a Pivotal Role in Improving Social Mobility

Promoting increased social mobility requires reexamining a wide range of economic, health, social, and education policies. Higher education has always been a key way for poor Americans to find opportunities to transform their economic circumstances. In a time of rising inequality and low social mobility, improving the quality of and access to education has the potential to increase equality of opportunity for all Americans.

9. A college degree can be a ticket out of poverty.

The earnings of college graduates are much higher than for nongraduates, and that is especially true among people born into low-income families. Figure 9 shows the earnings outcomes for individuals born into the lowest quintile of the income distribution, depending on whether they earned a college degree. In a perfectly mobile society, an individual would have an equal chance of ending up in any of the five quintiles, and all the bars would be level with the bold line.

As the figure shows, however, without a college degree a child born into a family in the lowest quintile has a 45 percent chance of remaining in that quintile as an adult and only a 5 percent chance of moving into the highest quintile. On the other hand, children born into the lowest quintile who do earn a college degree have only a 16 percent chance of remaining in the lowest quintile and a 19 percent chance of breaking into the top quintile. In other words, a low-income individual without a college degree will very likely remain in the lower part of the earnings distribution, whereas a low-income individual with a college degree could just as easily land in any income quintile—including the highest.

10. The sticker price of college has increased significantly in the past decade, but the actual price for many lower- and middle-income students has not.

In the past decade, increases in the sticker price of attending college have made going to college appear, for some, prohibitively expensive. Published tuition and fees for the 2012–13 academic year are projected to average $26,060 for private four-year institutions, and $8,860 in-state for public four-year institutions (College Board 2012). But before allowing this sticker price to be a deterrent, students must look deeper to learn whether those costs apply to them. Looking at net tuition—the price that the average student actually pays after financial aid—the picture is very different.

Because of increases in federal, state, and college-provided financial aid, not only is average net tuition much lower than average published tuition, but it has also increased at a much lower rate than published tuition in the past ten years. As seen in figure 10, net in-state tuition and fees at public four-year colleges have only increased by an average of $1,420 since 2002, which is less than half of the increase in the published rate. Although published tuition at private four-year colleges has increased by an average of $6,090 since 2002, net tuition has only increased by $230. In fact, the projected average net tuition at private four-year colleges for the academic year 2012–13 is 3.7 percent lower than the average net tuition in 2007–08 and lower than all five academic years between 2004–05 and 2008–09 (College Board 2012).

For many households, high costs of tuition are a burden. Once families and students have a sense of what financial aid they are eligible for, they can get a more accurate idea of the actual price tag for tuition. For each student, the net cost is the important consideration when making educational decisions.

11. Few investments yield as high a return as a college degree.

Obtaining a college degree can significantly boost one’s income. Over the past three years, individuals between the ages of thirty and fifty who graduated from high school but did not attend college could expect to earn less than $30,000 per year. Those whose highest level of educational attainment was a bachelor’s degree earned just under $60,000 per year, and those with an advanced degree earned over $80,000.

But even individuals who attend college and do not obtain a degree still see an increase in their annual earnings. Those who leave college before receiving a credential or degree earn about $7,000 per year more than those with only a high school diploma, and individuals holding an associate’s degree earn over $10,000 more.

Higher education is one of the best investments an individual can make. As shown in figure 11, the returns to earning an associate’s, professional, or bachelor’s degree exceed 15 percent, and even the average return to attending some college for those who do not earn a degree is 9 percent. In comparison, the average return to an investment in the stock market is a little over 5 percent; gold, ten-year Treasury bonds, T-bills, and housing are 3 percent or less.

Although the return to an associate’s degree really stands out, this high return partially reflects the lower cost of an associate’s degree rather than a major boost to long-run earnings. Over a lifetime, the earnings of an associate’s degree recipient are roughly $170,000 higher than those of a high school graduate, while the earnings of a bachelor’s degree holder are $570,000 more than those of a high school graduate.

While it is likely that college graduates have different aptitudes and ambitions that might affect earnings and thus the resulting economic returns, a large body of academic research suggests there is a strong causal relationship between increases in education and increases in earnings (Card 2001).

12. Students are borrowing more to attend college—and defaulting more frequently on their loans.

Over the past decade, the volume and frequency of student loans have increased significantly. The share of twenty-five-year-olds with student debt has risen by about 15 percentage points since 2004, and the amount of student debt incurred by those under the age of thirty has more than doubled (Lee 2013).

Despite these increases, the majority of students appear to borrow prudently. About 90 percent have loan balances less than $50,000, and 40 percent have balances under $10,000 (Fry 2012). Given that a college graduate can expect to earn, on average, about $30,000 more per year than a high school graduate over the course of his or her life, the returns to college appear to warrant the cost of student loans for most students.

Still, recent trends in student loans raise questions and concerns that merit further investigation. For one, it is unclear why student debt is increasing at its current trajectory. Neither college enrollment nor net college tuition has risen dramatically enough over the past decade to explain the rapid upsurge. Second, even though most students have a relatively low total loan balance, the default rate has increased significantly over the past decade: the share of those more than ninety days delinquent rose from under 10 percent in 2004 to about 18 percent in 2012 (figure 12b). While the returns to investments in college remain high, it will be important for policymakers to better understand why debt and delinquency rates have increased over the past decade.

13. New low-cost interventions can encourage more low-income students to attend, remain enrolled in, and increase economic diversity at even top colleges.

To promote social mobility, enabling more low- and middle-income students to pay for college with federal grants is one of the most important goals that policymakers can pursue. For the past several decades, the main tools for achieving this goal have been Pell grants, Stafford loans, or merit-based aid such as the state of Georgia’s HOPE Scholarship. Researchers estimate that, depending on the exact program, the effect of $1,000 of college aid is an increase of 3 to 6 percentage points in college enrollment (Deming and Dynarski 2009). As figure 13 shows, this translates into a total cost of between $20,000 and $30,000 to send one additional student to college through these aid programs. To put this in context, the average difference in earnings between a college graduate and a high school graduate is almost $30,000 per year, so these programs are likely to be beneficial on net.

Figure 13 also reports on new, low-cost interventions that can complement federal and state aid programs to send more kids to college and to better schools, and to convince them to stay in college once they get there. One study finds that simplifying and assisting low-income students in the financial aid application process increases college enrollment by about 8 percentage points, and costs less than $100 per student (Bettinger et al. 2009). And, on a per student basis, employing mentors to coach students on the value of staying in college beyond their freshman years is $10,000 less expensive than need- or merit-based scholarships (Bettinger and Baker 2011).

Another study found that mailing high-achieving, low-income students personalized information on their college options nudged those students to apply to better schools. At a cost of only $6 per student contacted, this intervention increased low-income students’ applications to selective schools by more than 30 percentage points (Hoxby and Turner 2013).

Advantages of Education to Social Mobility

Categories: Social Mobility

About this sample

Words: 1652 |

Published: Jun 9, 2021

Words: 1652 | Pages: 4 | 9 min read

Works Cited

“Housing Vouchers Work: Efficiently Helping Families Afford Homes.” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 11 Oct. 2017, www.cbpp.org/blog/housing-vouchers-work-efficiently-helping-families-afford-homes.
- https://www.jstor.org/stable/43869027?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents (did not want to cite)
“The Benefits of Education.” Global Partnership for Education, www.globalpartnership.org/education/the-benefits-of-education.
Reeves, Richard V., and Allegra Pocinki. “Space, Place, Race: Six Policies to Improve Social Mobility.” Brookings, Brookings, 29 July 2016, www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2015/06/02/space-place-race-six-policies-to-improve-social-mobility/.

Should follow an “upside down” triangle format, meaning, the writer should start off broad and introduce the text and author or topic being discussed, and then get more specific to the thesis statement.

Provides a foundational overview, outlining the historical context and introducing key information that will be further explored in the essay, setting the stage for the argument to follow.

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The topic sentence serves as the main point or focus of a paragraph in an essay, summarizing the key idea that will be discussed in that paragraph.

The body of each paragraph builds an argument in support of the topic sentence, citing information from sources as evidence.

After each piece of evidence is provided, the author should explain HOW and WHY the evidence supports the claim.

Should follow a right side up triangle format, meaning, specifics should be mentioned first such as restating the thesis, and then get more broad about the topic at hand. Lastly, leave the reader with something to think about and ponder once they are done reading.

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Does Education Increase Social Mobility?

Pieter Serneels

RISE Fellows

University of East Anglia

Education is widely seen as a key determinant of social mobility within a person’s lifetime and across generations. For the first time, we now have high-quality data available that allows us to study social mobility in developing countries more rigorously. The 2019 RISE Annual Conference brought together four papers in its first session, doing just that. Three sets of findings emerge from the presented and other work in this area:

Schooling matters for social mobility within a lifetime and across recent generations, but possibly less than often thought. Causal evidence remains scarce, but seems to confirm these findings. Educational mobility is much higher among previous generations, who seem to have reaped the fruits of early educational expansion, when education levels were much lower.
Variation in social mobility is very large—both geographically and across social groups. Locality is a key covariate and suggests (at least) two important channels: quality of schooling (on the supply side) and aspirations (on the demand side).
For policymaking a prudent lesson stands out: Targeted interventions do not necessarily work better than non-targeted ones, even though in some contexts affirmative action has been shown to work.

Let’s go through these findings in more detail.

Mapping social mobility

The first step in this active field of research consists of mapping how schooling during childhood is related to social background and earnings later in life. Existing work typically looks at completed years of schooling. Abhijeet Singh presented unique new findings from across five countries (Ethiopia, India, Pakistan, Peru, Vietnam) looking at learning — rather than years of schooling . The good news is that they find those who have learned more at the end of primary school to be more likely to progress to tertiary education, a strong predictor of high earnings later in life (while controlling for socio-economic status). The magnitude of the relationship is substantial: closing the learning gap between the bottom and top socio-economic quantiles at age 12 would narrow the gap in completed years of schooling at age 22 by between 25 percent and 50 percent. While this is unfulfilling from an equality of opportunity point of view, it is large from a policy perspective—it is hard to think of policies with a bigger impact. Further analysis indicates that the gaps in learning are evident early on and remain mostly unchanged between ages 8 and 15, confirming previous evidence for earlier life periods in other settings (see Figure 1 in Heckman, [2007] ).

Other recent work confirms constraints to social mobility, this time across generations. Due to the lack of income data, social mobility across generations is often measured in terms of years of schooling itself (so social mobility is proxied by educational mobility across generations). A detailed study for India that allows cross-group analysis finds that although overall upward mobility remains relatively unchanged for those at the bottom, there is substantial geographic and social variation within this group: while Scheduled Castes and Tribes maintain high upward mobility, Muslims are now the least upwardly mobile ( Asher et al., 2019 ).

Worldwide, persistence in years of schooling across generations (which measures the lack of mobility) is also found to be high, with those in the bottom half of parental education having low chances of rising to the top quartile ( Narajan and van der Weide, 2019 ). Persistence is found to be typically higher (so mobility lower) in low-income countries (and the gap with high-income countries seems to be rising), but some areas in parts of East Asia, Latin America and the Middle East have lower persistence; and girls are generally found to be catching up with boys. Because these studies concentrate on educational mobility across generations, they may be over- or underestimating income mobility, but it is the best we have for now.

Does education cause social mobility in developing countries?

A next step is to assess the causal relationship. One popular approach is to study the impact of an (exogenous) change in the supply of schooling. Marieke Kleemans and co-authors find that men who benefited from Indonesia’s large school building programme in the 1970s, apart from having completed considerably higher years of schooling (0.27 for men and 0.23 for women), are more likely forty-three years later to be working in the formal sector, working outside agriculture, and to have migrated. Women are also more likely to have migrated, have fewer children, and be in a household with improved living standards. These effect sizes remain small, below 5 percentage points, with impact on women’s fertility among the largest, (confirming other recent evidence, see for instance Oye, Pritchett & Sandefur [2016] and Koppensteiner & Matheson [2019] for an in-depth study of Brasil). Benefits also carry over to the next generation, who enjoy more education (0.10 and 0.17 years for men and women respectively), in particular, secondary and tertiary education. The effect of a mother’s education is consistently and significantly larger than that of a father’s education. A key mediating factor is the characteristics of the marriage partner, in particular, spouses with more education and improved labour market outcomes

What does intergenerational mobility look like when going back further in time? Leonard Wantchekon assesses intergenerational mobility across three generations in Benin. Exploiting the haphazard choice both of the venue where missionary posts were settled, and of the children who were taught in these schools, he compares (a) outcomes of descendants of those who had schooling and (b) companions of the same cohort who did not get but were exposed to schooling by living in a village with a school, with (c) those living in similar villages without schools (control group) to estimate direct (a-c) and indirect (b-c) treatment effects. He finds important income mobility for both the 2nd to the 3rd generation, especially for those who were exposed to schooling but did not attend school themselves (indirect effect). The effects are largest for those of lower-income categories. For the third generation, the effect is entirely at the village level, suggesting important externalities. Those exposed to (but not having attended) schooling are found to have higher risk aversion and improved self-reliance, work ethic, and life outlook. This is consistent with aspirations as a key mechanism for social mobility (see below).

These results also corroborate recent evidence from 26 countries across Africa observing substantial variation in upwards educational mobility both across and within countries, and noting an important role for geographical exposure ( Alesina et al., 2019 ).

It is interesting to compare these results with those from a recent US study, which also finds high educational mobility among previous generations, in this case, parents born between 1880 and 1910, and their children, born in the 1920s (< Card et al., 2018 ). What these studies have in common is that they look at an era of substantial expansion of primary education when levels of schooling were very low. This higher mobility early on raises the question whether a ‘golden age of upward mobility’ is mostly behind us now, in the US or elsewhere, and if so why? A likely answer lies in the relative demand for educated workers, which even if low, must have far outstripped supply in early days, thereby securing a well-paid job to these early generations who went to school. However, there is an important qualification: while the roll-out of education worldwide has been impressive, it has also been uneven. Schooling is lower among some social groups. And while enrolment rates have been high, the quality of schooling varies widely. Large numbers of children attend school but with little learning . The study by Card et al . also confirms the role of education quality for historical upward intergenerational mobility in the US. Similar evidence for developing countries is not yet available as far as we know.

Improving upward social mobility

What is the best way to improve upward social mobility? Should interventions target specific groups or are general, non-targeted, educational improvements equally effective? David Evans and Fei Yuan, in their presentation, assessed which programmes have been most effective at reducing education and learning gaps, focusing on experimental and quasi-experimental interventions that included girls. They find general interventions to be just as effective as girl-targeted interventions at improving outcomes for girls. The best way to ameliorate girls’ access to school turns out to be cutting the cost of schooling, while the preferred way to advance girls’ learning is through improvements in pedagogy for all pupils.

This is a compelling finding. Nevertheless, it is unlikely to be a general principle. Recent work on India finds that affirmative action can have strong positive effects on enrollment outcomes for the targeted group, in this case, lower caste ( Bagde, 2016 ). This fits with the observation that virtually all gains in upward mobility in recent times accrued to Scheduled Castes and Tribes, who have benefited from constitutional protection, reservation in education and politics, and targeted policies. Meanwhile, the upward mobility of Muslims, who enjoy very little targeted policies, has declined ( Asher et al., 2019 ). At the same time, affirmative action comes with challenges and pitfalls. Earlier work highlights potential undesirable consequences for non-targeted groups, for instance, reducing the number of female applicants in the presence of caste-based targeting ( Bertrand et al., 2009 ).

Ways forward for research on education and social mobility

This blog started by summarising three big messages. What do they imply for future work? Improved data will undoubtedly allow better mapping of social mobility. This, in turn, will further highlight the central question: What explains the large variation in social mobility? Why do some areas, groups, individuals, or periods show strong upward mobility—within their life or across generations—while others do not? What are the moderating factors and what are the mediating ones? Existing work underlines the central role of locality (neighbourhoods, villages, regions), both for social mobility within one’s life and across generations. What do these neighbourhood effects mean? Two key factors present themselves.

Quality of schooling is expected to play an important role on the supply side . Most work focuses on years of education (but not on learning) underestimating the variation in skills and knowledge. The study by Singh and co-authors looks at learning outcomes across five countries and finds that learning at age 12 helps explain advancement to tertiary education substantially, albeit not fully (and it does not control for locality). This confirms the expected importance of quality of schooling; further work is needed to deepen our understanding of this relationship.

On the demand side, several factors may play a role, i ncluding credit and information constraints , as shown by previous studies (see for instance Jenssen , Attanasio & Kaufmann ). Recent work also underlines the role of people’s internal constraints, like attitudes, hope, and aspirations . Anthropologists argue that the poor may lack the capacity to aspire in order to overcome the conditions of their own poverty (see Appadurai, 2004 ). Aspirations are socially embedded: they are the product of what people see around them. Recent work in the US provides a fascinating illustration. Focusing on innovators, a study by Bell, Chetty and co-authors finds that children of the same mathematical ability (which is a strong predictor of patented inventors later in life) are much more likely to invent in a type of technology to which they have been exposed to in their childhood neighbourhood. Other recent work looks at the effect of role models and local leaders . In my own work , analysing data for India, we find a strong and meaningful relationship between mother’s educational aspirations for her child at age 12 and completed years of schooling, learning, and labour outcomes at ages 15 and 18. Work on Ethiopia demonstrates that aspirations can be moulded. An intervention that shows films with life stories of poor people who managed to improve their life through their own effort is found to alter aspirations and investment in education both six months and five years later, and has considerable spill-overs. Recent conceptual work on hope provides an attractive framework for a structured way of thinking about internal constraints.

The increased availability of data on learning, combined with the renewed interest in long term panel data, promises exciting further work investigating these mechanisms.

Many thanks to Lant Pritchett for comment on an earlier draft of this blog.

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The International Encyclopedia of Higher Education Systems and Institutions pp 2557–2562 Cite as

Social Mobility and Higher Education

Vikki Boliver 3 &
Paul Wakeling 4
Reference work entry
First Online: 01 January 2020

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1 Citations

Absolute mobility ; Relative mobility ; Social fluidity ; Social openness

The impact of participation in tertiary-level education on the movement of individuals up or down the social class structure from one generation to the next (intergenerational mobility) or during the course of a career (intragenerational mobility).

Social mobility refers to the movement of individuals between different positions in the social structure over time. Closed societies are characterized by ascription, whereby social position is assigned early in life and is difficult to change. Contemporary notions of the good society instead emphasize openness and a shift from ascription to attainment, whereby social position is not determined by inheritance but rather by ability, effort, and disposition. Within sociology, studies of social mobility focus on the association between parental and filial social position across generations, typically employing occupational social class as the key measure.

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Boliver, V., Wakeling, P. (2020). Social Mobility and Higher Education. In: Teixeira, P.N., Shin, J.C. (eds) The International Encyclopedia of Higher Education Systems and Institutions. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8905-9_43

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Essay on Social Mobility

Students are often asked to write an essay on Social Mobility in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Social Mobility

What is social mobility.

Social mobility is like the game of life but in real society. It means moving up or down the social ladder. This could be about getting a better job than your parents, earning more money, or living in a nicer place.

Types of Social Mobility

There are two main types: going up, which is called upward mobility, and going down, known as downward mobility. It’s like climbing up or sliding down a playground slide.

Why It Matters

Social mobility is important because it shows if everyone has a fair chance to improve their life. It’s like checking if the game of society is played fairly, where hard work pays off.

250 Words Essay on Social Mobility

Social mobility: the movement of individuals through different social strata.

People move up and down the social ladder all the time depending on their life circumstances. Social mobility is the movement of individuals, families, households, or other categories of people within or between social strata in a society. It is a concept that describes how people’s social status can change over time.

There are two main types of social mobility:

Vertical mobility: This is when someone moves up or down the social ladder. For example, a person born into a poor family who becomes a wealthy business owner is said to have experienced upward vertical mobility.

Factors Affecting Social Mobility

There are many factors that can affect a person’s social mobility. These include:

Education: People with more education are more likely to have higher-paying jobs and better social status.
Family background: People born into wealthy and well-connected families are more likely to have opportunities for success than those born into poor and disadvantaged families.
Race and ethnicity: In many societies, people from certain racial and ethnic groups face discrimination, which can limit their opportunities for social mobility.

Social mobility is a complex issue that is influenced by a variety of factors. It is important to understand social mobility in order to develop policies and programs that can help to promote equality and opportunity for all.

500 Words Essay on Social Mobility

Social mobility is like a ladder that people can climb up or down in society. It’s about whether you can move to a better or worse place in society compared to where your family started. Imagine if your family didn’t have a lot of money or a big house, but you studied hard, got a good job, and ended up with a nicer house and more money. That’s you moving up the ladder – that’s social mobility.

There are two main types of social mobility: upward and downward. Upward mobility is when someone moves up in society, like getting a better job than their parents. Downward mobility is the opposite, where someone might end up in a worse situation than their parents. There’s also something called horizontal mobility, which is when someone moves to a different situation that’s pretty much the same as their old one, like a teacher switching to another teaching job at a different school.

Why is Social Mobility Important?

Social mobility is important because it shows that in a society, people have the chance to change their situation. It gives everyone hope that no matter where they start, they can work hard and achieve their dreams. It also helps make society fairer because it means your future doesn’t have to be decided by your family’s past.

Many things can affect whether someone can move up or down in society. Education is a big one. Getting a good education can open up a lot of doors to better jobs and opportunities. The economy is another factor – when there are more jobs and businesses are doing well, it’s easier to move up. Family background also plays a role. If your family has connections or can support you going to college, you might have a better shot at moving up.

Challenges to Social Mobility

Even though social mobility is possible, it’s not always easy. Some people face big challenges, like poverty, discrimination, or living in areas with fewer opportunities. These obstacles can make it harder for people to climb up the ladder, no matter how hard they try.

Improving Social Mobility

To help more people move up in society, there are things that can be done. Improving education for everyone, making sure there are good jobs available, and helping families in need can all make a big difference. By working on these areas, society can help make sure that everyone has a fair chance to move up the ladder.

In conclusion, social mobility is about the ability to move up or down in society. It’s important because it gives everyone the chance to improve their situation and make society fairer. While there are challenges, there are also ways to improve social mobility and make sure everyone has a fair shot at their dreams.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

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Education and Social Mobility

Related Papers

British Politics

Social mobility has become a mainstream political and media issue in recent years in the United Kingdom. This article suggests that part of the reason for this is that it can serve as a mechanism to discuss policy concerns that appear to be about social justice without questioning important aspects of neo-liberal political economy. The article charts the policy rhetoric on social mobility under both New Labour and the current Coalition Government. It is argued first that under New Labour the apparent commitment to social mobility was in fact subsumed beneath the pursuit of neo-liberal competitiveness, albeit imperfectly realised in policy. Second, the article suggests that under the Coalition Government the commitment to raising levels of social mobility has been retained and the recently published Strategy for Social Mobility promises that social mobility is what the Coalition means when it argues that the austerity programme is balanced with ‘fairness’. Third, however, the Strategy makes clear that the Coalition define social mobility in narrower terms than the previous government. It is argued here that in narrowing the definition the connection with the idea of competitiveness, while still clearly desirable for the Coalition, is weakened. Fourth, a brief analysis of the Coalition's main policy announcements provides little evidence to suggest that even the narrow definition set out in the Strategy is being seriously pursued. Fifth, the international comparative evidence suggests that any strategy aimed at genuinely raising the level of social mobility would need to give much more serious consideration to narrowing levels of inequality. Finally, it is concluded that when considered in the light of the arguments above, the Strategy for Social Mobility – and therefore ‘Fairness’ itself – is merely a discursive legitimation of the wider political economy programme of austerity.

Surya Monro

An Evaluation of a major sport and art participation project for young people in Derby, aimed to increase participant's 'Essential Life Skills' and 'Social Mobility'.

Capital and Class

This article focuses on the way that households respond to 'global pressures' by adapting their social reproduction strategies (SRS). We understand social reproduction strategies to encapsulate the more or less consciously developed day-today and inter-generational responses to the social conditions that households confront and their own motivations and aspirations for the future. Yet, due to a range of extant inequalities of accumulated and dynamic resources-some of which are material and some of which are at once ethereal and embodied in the concrete labouring capacities of individuals-we argue that social reproduction strategies, and capacities to pursue them, differ widely. Differences are conditioned by positionality, access to information and the construction of 'economic imaginaries' as well as material resources. By looking at these different expressions of social reproduction strategies, we highlight how they reinforce macro-scale socioeconomic pressures, creating what we term 'compound inequality' into the future. Compound inequalities result from different behavioural responses to socioeconomic conditions, inequality and (perceived or

Ricardo Cuenca

The purpose of this article is to analyze how social mobility and social inclusion are perceived by a group of professionals from modest backgrounds, who graduated from public universities and whose personal histories reflect levels of exclusion. This qualitative study, which is organized in six dimen-sions of analysis—migration and territorial mobility, education, occupation and income, social capital, vulnerability, and expectations—shows four main findings, which inevitably also raise new working hypotheses. The findings are the following: that social mobility and social inclusion are heterogeneous processes that education remains a means of both mobility and inclusion, that social mobility coexists with inequality, and that mobility and social inclu-sion require broader means of conceptualization because of the difficulty of understanding this process in people with particular characteristics and from particular backgrounds.

okwarmoi joyce

education influence to social mobility

Research in Social Stratification and Mobility

Kristen Springer , R. Hauser

The authors review the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) across its history of more than 40 years. The WLS began as a study of post-secondary aspirations and educational attainment among Wisconsin high school graduates of 1957, but it has become a major, long-term study of the life-course and aging. The most visible contributions of the WLS to date have been theories

Paul Wakeling

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Education and Social Mobility

Most of our students now do not see the need for college education. They are discouraged by the reality that when they leave school, only manual labor awaits them. This memo will discuss the critical role the knowledge industry plays to erase the mindset these children have regarding economic opportunity and social mobility. Furthermore, this paper will point out the ways in which this problem could be handled or minimized.

Webster defines education as the process of educating or teaching to develop one’s knowledge, skill, or character (cited in Teacher Minds Resources, 2002). The word education comes from e-ducere, a Latin word meaning “to lead out.” This leading out means “guiding on a way especially by going in advance” (Merriam-Websters Dictionary). This was practiced by a group of itinerant teachers called the Sophists who “promised to give students the necessary knowledge and skills to gain positions with the city-state” (Teacher Minds Resources, 2002).

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However, in this day and age, it seems that our students do not strive to gain important positions in the society. Furthermore, they do not view higher education as a means to take them into the higher steps on the “ladder of social mobility” (Macleod, 1995). Where then is education’s “leading out” purpose in this situation? Where now is education’s promise of knowledge and skills to students for them to achieve decent and proper jobs in society? According to Ayn Rand, “the only purpose of education is to teach a student how to live his life-by developing his mind and equipping him to deal with reality” (cited in Teacher Minds Resources, 2002). If today’s reality speaks of various struggles in life such as money, love, and happiness, then education should continue to serve its purpose of helping students cope up with these struggles.

To convince our students to pursue higher education, educational institutions need to make them feel they are accepted whatever their social status may be. Education should ensure “equality of opportunity” (Macleod, 1995) for all.

The role of education in promoting social mobility has been a central issue in current sociological and political debates. Education has become a significant factor in determining which job people enter, thus determining their social class position (Iannelli and Paterson, 2005). Goldthorpe (1996) and Breen and Goldthorpe (1997) proposed a model in which they assume that “families from different classes seek to ensure that their children acquire a class position at least as advantageous as that from which they originate” or, simply put, “to avoid downward mobility” (cited in Whelan and Hannan, n.d., p. 287).

However, learning about Freddie Piniella, an intelligent eleven-year-old boy from Clarendon Heights who does not want to go to college because he thinks he will “just end up getting a shitty job anyway” (cited in Macleod, 1995), it is a reality that most children do not regard education as the vehicle towards social mobility. I have personally observed this from children of working class families whom I have talked to. These students fail to strive to get out from the disadvantaged positions they originated from. They are discouraged to aim for higher opportunities because they see that education lack the capacity to “deliver the goods” (cited in Macleod, 1995). Based on Erikson’s stages of development, the crisis of inferiority took over the value of industry in these schoolchildren’s minds, leading to the lack or absence of competence in achieving and accomplishing something (Chapman, 2007).

Studies have shown that middle class families believe that “education and the acquisition of educational qualifications are important means through which they can pass on their social and economic advantage to their children.” This is why nowadays, children from these families are more determined to get a degree than children from working class families (Iannelli and Paterson, 2005). But this should not be the case since every student should strive to improve their lives as well as their families’, especially if they have long experienced social immobility.

Educational institutions like you play a very crucial and important role in the process of convincing children to pursue higher education, not just for themselves, but for their families, and for the nation. These students are our future and we do not want them to dream ordinary dreams. We want them to aim high and never lose sight of the opportunities that are supposedly for them. You and your “admission, selection, and certification processes may play a significant role in reducing or maintaining social inequalities” (Iannelli and Paterson, 2005). You need to reach out not just to the privileged ones who have the capability to pay for higher learning but also to the less-fortunate and bright ‘Freddie Piniellas’ because they, too, will play a big part on our nation’s destiny. These students need to know and access the various options they have when it comes to educational opportunities.

The expansion of your educational system may lead more children from working class backgrounds to occupy top-level occupations after college (Iannelli and Paterson, 2005), this is why your institutions should encourage them to develop the necessary knowledge and skills to gain positions that will best suit their capabilities.

As what education has promised then and now, your institution should “lead out” our students – lead them out of the social immobility they experience so that they will be encouraged to improve their lives and not be discouraged with the lack of opportunities for them. You need to inform them that indeed, the education you will provide will be for their own, their families’, and the nations’ benefit.

Chapman, A. (2007). Erikson’s Psychosocial Development Theory. Retrieved October 4, 2007 from http://www.businessballs.com/erik_erikson_psychosocial_theory.htm Iannelli, C. and Paterson, L. (June 2005). Does Education Promote Social Mobility?

Retrieved October 3, 2007 from www.ces.ed.ac.uk/PDF%20Files/Brief035.pdf

Macleod, J. (1995). Ain’t No Makin’ It: Aspirations and Attainment in a Low-Income

Neighborhood. Colorado: Westview Press.

Merriam-Websters. (2007). Lead. Merriam-Websters Online Dictionary. Retrieved

October 4, 2007 from http://mw1.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lead

Teacher’s Mind Resources (2002). The Meaning of Education. Retrieved October 3, 2007

from http://www.teachersmind.com/education.htm

Whelan, C. and Hannan, D. (n.d.). Class inequalities in educational attainment among the

adult population in the Republic of Ireland. The Economic and Social Review 30 (3),

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Role of Education in Social Mobility - Essay Example

Social mobility can be defined as the change in an individuals position in the social hierarchy. Various factors determine whether a person moves from one social class to another but according to David Moberg, a senior editor of In These Times Magazine, Americans have adopted a myth of the self-made man regarding the issue. This myth is centered on the idea that a person is solely responsible for what he makes of himself. This belief runs against the actual condition of the American society of class and social mobility which is driven mainly by the inequality existing between the super-rich and the poor. Trends have revealed that with increased inequality comes slow social mobility, but when the economy exercises equality, social mobility tends to increase. Although reports have indicated a slow mobility in the country in the past decades, with the super-rich having made it, especially with the help of the Bush tax cuts during his term, Americans hold to the belief that there is more social mobility than there is. This essay will explore the role of education in social mobility.

In the modern society, education is considered a pivotal factor in social mobility. Education is the channel that facilitates mobility, with the achievement of higher increasing the opportunities for upward mobility. This is to say that access to education determines the extent of mobility one can aspire in the society. Moberg emphasizes the importance of a college degree since it does not only instill knowledge, but also it serves as a class-based mechanism to sort for certain jobs. With greater inequality, there exists widened disparities in resources that can be allocated to education, and which too are critical in entering many careers and for social mobility. Yet most Americans accept the view of having an ever-wider difference between rich and poor since they believe that one will make it through individual efforts. Records have shown that substantive equality creates more equality of opportunity, such as one to acquire an education.

The level of education dictates the kind of occupation one finds himself. The higher the education level, the more prestigious jobs one is likely to scoop, and vice-versa. Prestigious jobs move an individual up the social class since it offers a high remuneration package coupled with class privileges that come with the titles. This could be said to be the reason behind the self-made man ideology present with the American people. When one achieves, he or she attributes the achievement to personal efforts other than look at it from a broader perspective of the availability of an opportunity to education and the eventual rise in social mobility. A close study of the society even in the process of acquiring education should shed light to the learners on the actual drivers of positive or negative mobility, lessons which they will carry through even when addressing societal issues in future such as reducing inequality.

Education also tends to group people into classes depending on their levels. These classes determine the sustainability of the job that one is holding. For instance, a person who did not finish college is likely to get a job which has no security and can close any time with no consultation. Most of these jobs are temporal and low-paying. Such individuals are the children of the working class senior citizens who probably lacked enough funds to finish college and, after that secure a more secure job. On the other hand, individuals who finish college and acquire advanced education have an almost guaranteed opportunity of securing a permanent well-paying job with multiple allowances and job security. They are perceived to be of a higher class than those who did not finish college. Such individuals are assured of their jobs as long as they are available to work. That explains how education segregates people into different classes and rewards them differently.

Social mobility is an issue of power. Education offers knowledge, which is power. An educated person can easily maneuver around the social and political lines and solicit economic empowerment for himself. An educated individual can weigh a particular situation, determine the issue at stake and establish a bargaining notch with the target. If successful, the close association with the rich will expose him to opportunities which he will apply his knowledge to seize. Eventually, this individual will experience an upward social mobility which will be as a result of applying the knowledge acquired through education to create an opportunity which was otherwise not available. This shows the power of education if utilized wisely.

In summary, education has a pivotal role to play in determining social mobility. It is the channel through which an individual can rise the social ladder since it provides a variety of opportunities, class, and security. The self-made myth held by the American people contrasts with the truth that social mobility is largely affected by inequality between the super-rich and the poor. However, this notion can be overcome and social mobility boosted through fostering education.

"Class Consciousness Matters" by David Moberg.

http://inthesetimes.com/article/2175

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Why Europe’s employers can – and should – do more to improve social mobility

Happy employee in business suit: Employment has a direct impact on income and social mobility.

Employment has a direct impact on income and social mobility. Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto

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Stay up to date:, jobs and skills.

Europe has been hailed as a land of opportunity but its environment for enabling social mobility is waning.
The changing nature of work alongside the impacts of digitization and automation, wage inequality and more are exacerbating a decline in social mobility.
While universities and schools can work to address the skills shortage, corporations can contribute by considering social mobility in outreach, recruitment, upskilling, retention, and leadership.

Europe is often regarded as a land of opportunity. In global research on social mobility – the ability for people to move up the economic ladder – the top 13 countries, led by Denmark , are all in Europe. The United States ranks 27th.

There are troubling signs, however, that the ladder is becoming rickety.

In the decade before the pandemic, European wages stagnated and household incomes increasingly failed to lift people out of poverty. According to the European Union (EU), over one in five people in the bloc are at risk of poverty or social exclusion.

Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development data shows this ratio has remained relatively the same since 2008 . Inflation and COVID-19 have taken a disproportionate toll on low-income households in recent years. For example, in Britain, students from lower-income backgrounds suffered greater learning losses and lower-skilled jobs were more likely to be lost or subject to lockdowns .

Most importantly, the nature of work is changing in ways that could exacerbate these trends:

Digitization and automation play a significant role in the growing income polarization between high-skill and low-skill workers in some European countries.
The reduction in labour’s share of total income , added to these technological changes, has increased inequality across the continent. These dynamics matter because there is a direct relationship between income inequality and social mobility.

Increasing social mobility should be seen as a matter of urgency. Governments have the lead role here, in terms of policies around taxation, education and the labour market. But business leaders cannot stand aloof and let policymakers do all the heavy lifting.

Have you read?

These are the 10 countries with the best social mobility, why a good education isn't always the key to social mobility, embedding social mobility.

After all, employment is the primary mechanism enabling people to improve their economic status. Moreover, it is in the interest of business to do its part to create a system in which people have scope to build and use their talents.

There is already a significant shortage of skilled workers in many fields; the percentage of job vacancies in the EU has doubled over the past decade. This trend could get worse as Europe ages, making the matter more urgent.

In the decade to 2030, Germany alone could see its labour force decline by 4 million people . Working with schools, universities and other organizations to expand and improve skills training could enable European companies to meet their needs and widen the pathway to success.

At the corporate level, initiatives promoting social mobility can be implemented around outreach, recruitment, upskilling, retention and leadership.

Take recruitment. Common practice is for companies to seek candidates with specific credentials and experience. Of course, for some jobs, this is necessary. But for many others, that approach is unnecessarily restrictive, screening out people with talent but not an exact resume match. Putting greater emphasis on existing skills and future potential , as opposed to credentials and past performance, can be a rewarding strategy.

So we can rethink where talent is sourced. For example, proximity is a major factor when disadvantaged students choose a university. Expanding recruiting to a broader range of institutions might be a way to find talent that would otherwise be overlooked.

Broadening perspectives

Another approach to identifying high-potential people just getting started is offering paid internships. Unpaid internships can keep less affluent or unconnected people out of the action. Indeed, a candidate who has had to work while studying may demonstrate qualities like grit and adaptability. It’s important to ask whether the application process considers these kinds of experiences.

Finally, companies can seek ways to offer remote work to reach a more socio-economically diverse workforce.

Some companies are making such efforts and seeing tangible benefits. One global insurance company developed learning and job experience programmes specifically to reach those from lower socio-economic backgrounds. From 2020-22, the percentage hired from this cohort rose 8 percentage points. In retail, another industry leader offers 100% education reimbursement and training programmes to upskill its staff. The result is 75% higher retention among those who participate.

McKinsey has broadened where it recruits and, in 2015, launched Generation , a nonprofit that has trained and placed more than 100,000 young adults from 18 countries (including five from Europe) into high-demand careers.

In strictly economic terms, healthy social mobility is valuable. The World Economic Forum found that a modest improvement in social mobility could add $ 13 billion a year to the UK economy, $12.6 billion to France and $10.2 billion to Italy. More important, though, is that it contributes to stability and well-being. At the bottom, social mobility is a barometer of hope.

For that reason and their own good, business leaders would do well to find ways to advance social mobility in their organizations and beyond.

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The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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School Is for Social Mobility

Thirteen Economic Facts about Social Mobility and the Role of Education

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Chapter 1: Inequality Is Rising against a Background of Low Social Mobility

1. Family incomes have declined for a third of American children over the past few decades.

2. Countries with high income inequality have low social mobility.

3. Upward social mobility is limited in the United States.

Chapter 2: The United States Is Experiencing a Growing Divide in Educational Investments and Outcomes Based on Family Income

4. The children of high- and low-income families are born with similar abilities but different opportunities.

5. There is a widening gap between the investments that high- and low-income families make in their children.

6. The achievement gap between high- and low-income students has increased.

7. College graduation rates have increased sharply for wealthy students but stagnated for low-income students.

8. High-income families dominate enrollment at America’s selective colleges.

Chapter 3: Education Can Play a Pivotal Role in Improving Social Mobility

9. A college degree can be a ticket out of poverty.

10. The sticker price of college has increased significantly in the past decade, but the actual price for many lower- and middle-income students has not.

11. Few investments yield as high a return as a college degree.

12. Students are borrowing more to attend college—and defaulting more frequently on their loans.

13. New low-cost interventions can encourage more low-income students to attend, remain enrolled in, and increase economic diversity at even top colleges.

Advantages of Education to Social Mobility

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Education and Social Mobility

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