Fixed Britain: Social mobility on the up and up

British social mobility, so the received wisdom goes, is falling through the floor. A combination of conservatives, seeking to bash the Government, and the Government, seeking to justify further investments in social-mobility boosting public services, have agreed that Britain is now less mobile than it used to be.

One paper has been especially influential, the Sutton Trust's work from economist's Jo Blanden, Stephen Machin and Paul Gregg, who used British cohort studies to find a decline in upward mobility between the cohort born in 1958 and that born in 1970. Their 2005 paper has, arguably, had more influence on public debate than any academic paper of the past 20 years. So, mobility is falling? Not so fast, argues Prospect's own David Goodhart. He finds problems with the findings, their use by politicians, and in particular different methods used by economists and sociologist. The result:

The lazy consensus which has decreed the end of social mobility is both wrong and damaging—implying that despite the billions that Labour, in particular, has poured into pre-school support and so on, nothing will ever change.

As a companion piece to David, we are also luck enough to mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of Michael Young's The Rise of the Meritocracy with a wry essay from his son, Toby Young, on the rise of the celebritariat - "the people featured in Heat magazine, rather than Hello!, the premier league footballers and their wives, pop stars, movie stars, soap stars and the like." Toby thinks this celebrity class is surprisingly meritocratic, and because of its visibility, it helps to persuade people that Britain is a fairer place than it really is.

Read David's essay here, and Toby's here.