Of dreams and drift

“Social mobility” waffle only cements inequality, explains Tom Clark

1. Bootstrap Britain

Inequality is top of the economic agenda these days, but decades of British Social Attitudes data point to a paradox: while around 80 per cent of us consistently think the gap between rich and poor is too wide, only around half that proportion ever support redistribution to narrow it. Bobby Duffy of King’s College London has devised special polling to shed light on why. One immediate answer drops out of the first chart: Brits are inclined to think we can all pull ourselves up by our own efforts, rating hard work and ambition as far more important than wealth and connections in getting ahead.

2. Prevailing winds

Crunching surveys across several rich countries, Stefanie Stantcheva of Harvard nails down the effect of such faith in meritocracy. The higher the number of poor children that people expect to make it to the top, the less likely those people are to support serious tax rates for the rich.

3. Flags and ladders

Differences between countries reinforce the point. In the US, inequality on the 0-100 Gini scale is around 8 points higher than in the UK, and 10 plus points higher than in many European states. Perhaps American politics washes its hands of inequality because of the continuing grip of “the American dream.” US voters are over-optimistic about mobility: they overestimate the frequency of “rags-to-riches” tales, and underestimate the stagnation at the bottom of their class-bound society. Brits and other Europeans, by contrast, are gloomy on both counts—one likely reason why European societies do more to close the income gap.

NOTE: ALL WORK CONVENED FOR ANGUS DEATON’S REVIEW OF INEQUALITIES AT THE IFS. UNDERLYING SOURCES: IPSOS-MORI; “INTERGENERATIONAL MOBILITY AND SUPPORT FOR REDISTRIBUTION” BY ALBERTO ALESINA, STEFANIE STANTCHEVA AND EDOARDO TESO, AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW 108 (2), 2018