Selfishness, Greed and Capitalism

If you’re born poor, you die pooragreed with John Goldthorpe, who stated unequivocally inhis most recent study that ‘if intergenerational mobility isconsidered in terms of social class, then, with relative justas with absolute rates, there is no evidence at all to supportthe idea of mobility in decline’ (emphasis in the original)(Bukodi et al. 2014: 17).What could explain the divergence between Blandenet al.’s findings and the rest? Part of the explanation liesin the fact that sociologists tend to study class, principallymeasured by occupation, whereas Blanden et al. focus onincome. There are pros and cons to each of these methods.Income is easier to quantify, but occupational status is lessprone to temporary fluctuations and misreporting.Both sides in this debate accept their opponent’s evidencewhen taken at face value. Blanden accepts that ‘whensocial class is used as the measure of status there is littlechange in mobility’ (Blanden et al. 2013) while Goldthorpeaccepts that Blanden’s data do indeed show that incomemobility has declined (Erikson and Goldthorpe 2010). Andyet their findings appear to be irreconcilable. We wouldexpect greater class mobility to lead to greater incomemobility, but if Blanden et al. are correct, this seems notto be the case.Erikson and Goldthorpe (2010) argue that there areflaws in the income data that render Blanden et al.’s findingsunreliable. They argue that ‘one-shot measures ofcurrent income’ are poorer indicators of economic statusthan class because they are prone to temporary changes incircumstance. Peter Saunders (2010b: 46) has pointed outthat the income snapshot for the 1958 cohort was taken171