A study on social mobility in Britain has found that the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic is likely to have long term negative effects on the opportunities of young people.
Many young people in Britain today will not have the opportunities their parents or even grandparents had, a study published on Wednesday examining the social mobility prospects of younger generations has claimed.
The pessimistic report comes as many in Britain experience a marked decline in living standards due to the ongoing cost of living crisis, which has seen inflation push the price of food and energy skyward to become increasingly unaffordable for some, with even worse yet to come in the eyes of some pundits.
According to the paper published by the Sutton Trust think-tank, however, the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic is what’s mainly to blame for what it expects will be a sizable loss of social mobility for young people, making it harder for those from poorer backgrounds to achieve a better life than their parents.
The study estimates that social mobility levels will drop by up to 12 per cent as a result of a loss of educational opportunity caused by the COVID crisis, with the report also criticising the UK’s education system for not doing enough to enable those from poorer backgrounds to achieve mobility goals such as home ownership.
“As the UK celebrates the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, the review of social mobility patterns over time concludes that the dream of just doing better in life, let alone climbing the income ladder, is disappearing for generations growing up in the early 21st century,” a press release from the think tank on the research read.
“Their prospects contrast with generations born shortly after the Queen began her reign, who enjoyed a ‘golden age of upward mobility’ fuelled by expanding opportunities in society,” it continued, before calling for Britain to implement more long term education policies in the hopes of reversing the trend of declining opportunities.
In many ways, the news that young people today are going to have a much harder time moving up in the world than their parents is utterly unsurprising, with the West now facing food, inflation, and energy crises as a result of years of poor domestic and foreign policy decisions.
For example, inflation in the United States hit over 8 per cent back in April — prompting the country’s Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, to eat humble pie after predicting inflation wouldn’t be a long term problem — while inflation in the EU’s Eurozone more recently also breached the 8 per cent mark in May.
In many ways, the United Kingdom is in an even worse position, with general inflation having already hit 9 per cent while the price of food has reached decade highs.
This has prompted fears that more and more ordinary people will have significant levels of suffering inflicted upon them as time goes on, with the head of one major grocery chain in the country warning that the island is now seeing widespread food poverty.
“I was in some stores on Friday and I was hearing for the first time for many years of customers saying to checkout staff ‘Stop when you get to £40, I don’t want to spend a penny over that’,” said John Allan, the chairman of supermarket giant Tesco.
“I think that many of them are struggling to both be able to heat their homes and to feed their families,” he continued. “And I think we’re seeing, you know, real food poverty for the first time in a generation.”
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.