Research and analysis

Social mobility indicators

The social mobility indicators provide information on the progress and effectiveness of the social mobility strategy.

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Improving social mobility is a long-term challenge involving factors across generations and life stages.

Academic measures of social mobility compare the income and/or social class of children during mid-adulthood with that of their parents. They are backward looking, telling us about the impact of the policies to improve social mobility of up to forty years ago.

There are, however, a range of indicators that are likely to predict long-term social mobility and which could allow us to estimate progress over a shorter time frame to evaluate the success of our approach.

Opening Doors, Breaking Barriers: A Strategy for Social Mobility’ developed a set of leading indicators that will tell us whether, as a country, we are moving in the right direction towards improving social mobility.

Published 3 April 2013
Last updated 25 March 2015 + show all updates
  1. Updated progress against social mobility indicators.

  2. Updated data on social mobility indicators.

  3. Updated the social mobility indicators with latest figures.

  4. First published.