Social mobility, equality and meritocracy

Stumbling and Mumbling's recent post on social mobility and equality draws attention to a paper by Markus Jäntti, Bernt Bratsberg, Knut Roed, Oddbjørn Raaum, Robin Naylor, Eva Österbacka, Anders Björklund, Tor Eriksson: American Exceptionalism in a New Light: A Comparison of Intergenerational Earnings Mobility in the Nordic Countries, the United Kingdom and the United States (IZA version). The authors find that social mobility is lowest in the United States, and highest in the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden), with the United Kingdom located imbetween.

These are important findings, exposing the myth of the 'American dream', and using more robust methodology than previous studies. As the RES media notice, Fathers and Sons, notes:

This is not the first research to look at how intergenerational mobility compares across
countries. But it is one of the first to do so using a common statistical methodology
applied to highly standardised datasets for the different countries.

Chris Dillow summarises the paper's key finding in his blog post thus:

Social mobility and economic equality are complements, not substitutes. ...there is less social mobility in the US and UK than in the Nordic countries, where incomes are more equal.

And he poses some important questions:

For me, this raises several questions. Is this evidence that the UK and US are less meritocratic than Nordic countries? Or is merit in the UK and US more heriditary than in the Nordic area? If so, why? What is the transmission mechanism here? ...Does this research strengthen the case for greater redistributive taxation in the UK and US? Or is social mobility not desirable anyway?

Chris comments that "social mobility/meritocracy is a bad thing", but I don't necessarily see why. Sure a system of 'absolute' meritocracy in the workplace would depend on brutal competition, zero cooperation or teamwork, and require much higher rates of hiring and firing. But even investment banking at its ugliest is some distance from this hypothetical extreme.

Those who work harder and/or are better qualified surely deserve some recompense for their efforts. A world where merit was not recognised and rewarded would presumably allocate rewards based on class, clan, tribe, ethnicity, religion, age - or simply money.  Who would want that? So the question is not whether or not social mobility or meritocracy is 'good' or 'bad' - but  rather, how much is optimal? The answer to that question depends on what kind of society you want to live in.

Comments

[David]

My impression is that hiring (at least for top companies) is more metiocratic in the UK than in Sweden. I am a swede and I've been to a few internship interviews in the UK and I was really suprised that I had to do IQ, arithemetic, and other aptitude tests. As far as I know in Sweden such tests aren't widely used. You just have a general interview which presumably is less objective than also factoring in performance on aptitude tests. Also fewer jobs are advertised publicly and hiring more often happens through contacts.

This is all purely anectdotal of course!

[Blissex]

«My impression is that hiring (at least for top companies) is more metiocratic in the UK than in Sweden.»

Very very funny! Of course it is true if merit means ''the well paid safe jobs go to Oxbridge people where admission is largely won by paying a lot of money to go to a famous prep school''.

Or if you believe that merit means ''my dad and his dad were wealthy professionals and could buy me the shiniest credentials''.

Put another way: a few decades ago in England even the lazy or inept could get into good jobs if they had the right background.

That is largely no longer true; one has to be fairly good (zest and ability) to get a good job.

But this does not mean that access to good jobs is fair; it simply means that now one should have the right background _and_ be fairly good, it does not mean that being fairly good matters more than the background or someone who is fairly good but has a bad background has many chances.

Naturally while things are stacked heavily in favour of the reproduction of the elite, at least the lazier or less able scions no longer get a free pass and the better scions have to work a bit to get what is rightfully theirs, and great attention is paid to leave some minimal chances to the less fortunate...

After all "tokenism" is one of the most quintessentially english words (just like "uppity").