Sunday 7 September 2014

Social immobility...

****

Fascinating this:

Seven to ten generations are required before the descendants of high and low status families achieve average status. Thus in modern Sweden the descendants of the eighteenth-century nobility are still heavily overrepresented -- 300 years later -- among higher social status groups: doctors, attorneys, the wealthy, members of the Swedish Royal Academies. In the United Kingdom, the descendants of families who sent a son to Oxford or Cambridge around 1800 are still four times as likely to attend these universities as the average person. Social mobility rates have also been relatively impervious to government policy. They are no higher in societies like Sweden, with generous interventions in favor of the children of disadvantaged families, than in the more laissez-faire United States. For that matter, they are no higher in modern Sweden than in eighteenth-century Sweden, or medieval England.

It reminds me of a friend, a scion of an old and wealthy family, whose self-description was "downwardly mobile".

....

2 comments:

Blogger said...

I thnk the quote shows a complete ignorance of what 'social mobility' means - or at least what it sould mean if it is to have any value at all...

Politicians promises to me about my children, grand chidren, great grand children are 100% worthless.

It has been conslusively demonstrated/proved that politicians can't be trusted to keep promises made to we plebs about our own lives! They *certalinly* can't be trused to keep promises we won't be here to see!

That Obama could become president of the US - even more so if the attackes on his birth are true - is social mobility (for better or worse!) not kids, of kids, of kids...

Blogger said...

I thnk the quote shows a complete ignorance of what 'social mobility' means - or at least what it sould mean if it is to have any value at all...

Politicians promises to me about my children, grand chidren, great grand children are 100% worthless.

It has been conslusively demonstrated/proved that politicians can't be trusted to keep promises made to we plebs about our own lives! They *certalinly* can't be trused to keep promises we won't be here to see!

That Obama could become president of the US - even more so if the attackes on his birth are true - is social mobility (for better or worse!) not kids, of kids, of kids...