SOCIAL mobility is widely believed to be falling. In October the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, headed by Alan Milburn, a former Labour minister, warned that Britain risks becoming “permanently divided” unless action is taken. But on November 6th a new study* was published in the British Journal of Sociology suggesting that the trends in social mobility are more subtle.

The authors examined four birth cohorts: from 1946, 1958, 1970 and 1980-84. Using widely recognised categories for class on the basis of occupation, they studied how well individuals in each generation did compared with their fathers (problems with the available data prevented them from using both parents). They found that across all cohorts, about three-quarters of individuals ended up in a different class from the one they were born into, and the size of movements remained broadly constant. This suggests that, contrary to popular belief, social mobility has not declined.

However, the prevailing direction of movement is changing. From the 1950s to the 1980s there was a large expansion in high-status employment as education improved and professional services grew. This meant that there were more good opportunities than posh kids to fill them. More “room at the top” allowed those from lower classes to climb the ladder.

That growth in professional employment has now slowed. As a result, it has become harder for those at the bottom to move upwards. Moreover, children from affluent families face more of a struggle to replicate their parents’ standard of living (think unpaid internships and endless “extra-curricular” activities). The depressing result is that downward mobility is on the rise whereas upward mobility is becoming increasingly rare.

The story for women is different from that for men. As their participation in the workforce has increased, so has their upward social mobility, and this has not yet gone into reverse (although it started from a lower base).

The authors emphasise that the inequalities, although constant, are large. A child with a professional father is up to 20 times more likely to end up in a similarly privileged job than a child with a working-class father. On October 30th the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a think-tank, released a study showing that, even among those with identical educational achievements, those who are privately educated earn 7% more than their peers.

It has long been understood that social mobility must run in both directions, but this was easier to overlook when growth in good jobs meant upward mobility prevailed. Now it will be harder to ignore.

* “The mobility problem in Britain: New findings from analysis of birth cohort data”, by Bukodi, Goldthorpe, Kuha and Waller, British Journal of Sociology (2014)