Tag: Nick Clegg

Social mobility and inequality in the UK and the US: How to slide down the Great Gatsby Curve

~ MilesCorak ~ 3 Comments

In a speech given this morning to announce an update on the government’s Strategy for Social Mobility, Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minster of the United Kingdom, said that “We need an open society where people choose their place”; he said that “The effect of social class and class attitudes on Social Mobility are the ghost in the machine.”; and, in summary, he said that “We are a long distance from being a classless society”.

Yet in the same breath, he also said that it is a myth to suggest that reducing inequality will promote social mobility.

This is surely an inappropriate representation of the role of inequality in determining opportunity.

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Social mobility is about twice as great in Australia and Canada than in the United Kingdom and the United States

~ MilesCorak ~ 16 Comments

Social mobility is about twice as great in Australia and Canada than in the United Kingdom and the United States.

This is the first of three facts upon which my presentation to The Sutton Trust and The Carnegie Corporation workshop on social mobility called: “Social Mobility and Education in the Four Major Anglophone Countries” on May 21st. This summit of academics, politicians, and public policy advocates coincided with the one year anniversary since the Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Nick Clegg, released the government’s social mobility strategy.

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