Social mobility and equality of opportunity

Abstract

The idea of social mobility is closely linked to the concept of equality of opportunity: it is widely held that if there were greater equality of opportunity there would be more social mobility and, conversely, that more social mobility indicates greater equality of opportunity. In my view this argument is false and so, in my lecture today I want to talk about what we know about social mobility, what we might mean by equality of opportunity and why, despite the claims made by politicians and sometimes by social scientists, social mobility is not a yardstick of equality of opportunity.