So what is the truth of the matter?
It depends which measure of social mobility you would like to use. “Absolute social mobility” is based on progress up or down the scale of occupations. On this basis, there has been terrific social mobility over the past century. Half or more of us have been changing our occupational class positions – either up or down – compared with our fathers. This is partly due to the way, a century ago, three quarters of us were working class and only a quarter were middle class. Now those proportions have been turned on their head: there has been a huge movement from working-class to middle-class occupations.
One of the biggest studies of social mobility, in 1983, divided occupations into three classes: working class, intermediate class and the salaried class. It found that 22 per cent of the children of those in the lowest class progressed right up to the highest class.
Today four out of five children who grow up in poor households do not end up poor themselves, according to the Rowntree Foundation. Professor Peter Saunders, a respected sociologist, has argued: “Social mobility is the norm in Britain, not the exception, and it covers the range from top to bottom.”