Social Classes II

Social mobility in Britain

Here's what the figures of the latest OECD report across the world show:

• Britain has some of the lowest social mobility in the developed world - the OECD figures show our earnings in the UK are more likely to reflect our fathers' than any other country.

• Social mobility hasn't changed since the 1970s - and in some ways has got worse.

• 24% of vice-chancellors, 32% of MPs, 51% of top Medics, 54% of FTSE-100 chief execs, 54% of top journalists, 70% of High Court judges …went to private school, though only 7% of the population do.

• Education is an engine of social mobility. But achievement is not balanced fairly - for the poorest fifth in society, 46% have mothers with no qualifications at all. For the richest, it's only 3%

• Parental influence still makes a big difference to a child's education in the UK, especially compared to other countries - in fact in the UK the influence of your parents is as important as the quality of the school

• There is a strong link between a lack of social mobility and inequality - and the UK has both. Only Portugal is more unequal with less social mobility

• If you are at the top, the rewards are high - the top 1% of the UK population has a greater share of national income than at any time since the 1930s

Adapted from DataBlog May 2012

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/may/22/social-mobility-data-charts#data