A study of 8,118 high-level professionals and managers found that those from affluent backgrounds were much more likely to move to the UK, and ended up in wealthier areas when they did, than those with working-class parents. Moving to a wealthier area meant better access to well-paid jobs and better schools, which meant people from poorer backgrounds “couldn’t catch up” with their peers. In an article to be published this week in the British Sociological Society’s journal Sociology, Dr Katharina Hecht, of Northeastern University, in Boston, US, and Dr Daniel McArthur, of York University, said it is possible that the rich parents to have more resources to help their children buy a home. The two researchers conducted a longitudinal analysis of census data for people born between 1965 and 1981 and working in senior management and professional occupations aged 30 to 36. They looked at whether people had moved home at least 28km from the ages of 10 to 16 and compared their parents’ occupations, how often they moved house and the level of affluence of the local area they moved to. Of those with senior managerial and professional parents, about 60% made at least one long-distance move, while only 30% of those whose parents’ occupations were classified as ‘semi-routine’ or ‘routine’ had moved regions. “Among senior managers and professionals, those from privileged backgrounds lived in more affluent areas as children than those from disadvantaged backgrounds,” said McArthur and Hecht, who were based at the Politics of Inequality research center at the University of Konstanz in Germany. “This area gap persists into adulthood: when they move up, they cannot close the gap with their peers from privileged backgrounds in terms of the well-being of the areas they live in – they face a moving target. “Therefore, even when social upward movers – who grew up in less privileged places and are less likely to move long distances – move into the region, they cannot close the gap with their stable peers who started out in more affluent areas.” The researchers say that for women in senior occupations, the differences in family background correspond to the difference between “living in economically mixed areas on the south coast, such as Portsmouth, and living in affluent areas of the London commuter belt, such as Brentwood ». The difference was less dramatic for men. “Geography shapes access to opportunities for wealth accumulation, including higher-paying jobs, higher housing prices, and opportunities for entrepreneurship,” they said. “Affluent parents will be better able to facilitate … moves to high-cost but opportunity-rich areas such as London or the South East. “Children of senior executives and professionals are likely to have wealthier parents and therefore receive larger wealth transfers. They will be able to afford homes in more expensive areas, with no income, than their counterparts from less favored backgrounds. As a result, wealth is likely to play an important role in explaining why those from advantaged backgrounds move to more affluent areas than upward movers.” The head of the Social Mobility Committee, Katharine Birbalsingh, said there should be less focus on attracting poor students to Oxbridge and more on moving to improve people’s lives in smaller steps. In her first report as Commissioner, she said that job mobility had been fairly stable for decades and that it was not true that social mobility was getting worse in all respects. Research by the Sutton Trust earlier this year found that social mobility had become much more restricted, with those who lived in rented accommodation as children now much less likely to own their own home in later life. He found that many people were now more likely to fall down the class structure than to rise.
