For example, if someone is born into a struggling family of manual laborers (or a discriminated minority), but is smart and ambitious, how easy is it for them to get a good education and become someone important?
And speaking of social lifts, are there any that work better than trying to get a white-collar job if you're someone from a family of nobodies? For example, joining the army to become a general, or joining a trade union to become its head, or becoming a priest to become a bishop?
I think all of this is valid for Sweden also. Higher education is free, student loans are a normal thing to have and the interest rate is low.
Still many who don’t come from an educated background never even consider it an option.
I am an example of going from lower class as a child to upper middle class as an adult here in Denmark. I have one Danish parent and one immigrant parent.
Education was the way for me. University was free and I got a stipend (like everyone else) of €500 /month and cheap student housing. With a part time job I didn't need to take out loans.
Now I have a comfortable job and live in an affluant area. I never worry about bills and can afford a nice lifestyle with no major worries
Not speaking Dutch hurts your prospects in Denmark?
To a lesser extent valid for Scotland. Not as socially democratic. But the 1930s - 1990s were probably Scotland's golden age of social mobility, especially after WW2.
My grandparents generations largely born in slums with no toilets, moved out into government housing (in Scotland we call these housing schemes and 60% approx of Scotland lived in quality public government housing until the 1980s (when UKs Margaret Thatcher - who England elected not Scotland - sold them all to private investors and private owners ).
Its interesting how everywhere it's the same. It's either one or the other. No one dares to tax the rich more (although probably in Denmark it's already better than most) or cut back on subsidies for oil or other climte destroying things.
Are you a bot? Your comment seems completely unrelated
Pensions should be reduced
Public pension is already relatively low if that's the only source of income you have in Denmark, especially if you live alone and consider the cost of living here.
To add to that public retirement age has been bumped up to 74 for people born July 1996 or later.
if that's the only source of income you have in Denmark, especially if you live alone and consider the cost of living here.
I agree, but many (most?) retirees have some sort of passive income to complement that. I think regular pensions should be reduced while a complementary mechanism should be put in place that prevents those without side incomes to find themselves in poverty. Basically, if you earn less than say, 90% of median salary, an extra fund helps you reach that mark. If you can reach it passively, then no/little pension for you.
Now I am certain that policy wouldn't work for a number of reasons. I am not a policymaker. But you get the idea, and I bet there _are_ ways to implement that concept that make sense from an incentive POV.
To add to that public retirement age has been bumped up to 74 for people born July 1996 or later.
This is tragic, and essentially equals the dismantling of the pension system for new generations. Unfortunately, rather than cut down on the income of the elderly, which in most countries I'm familiar with is way higher than that of the young, we have decided to destroy both current and future prospects for the young. Our social welfare system has been gamed by a vampiric gerontocracy, essentially.
Many retirees do indeed have some sort of pension fund or other passive income.
If you do not have much or any other income there is a pension supplement you can get and also things like help paying your rent, water and heating bills, these supplements are not available to people that have a higher secondary income. So it is already split up like that a bit, except that everybody has the right to receive the base rate of the universal pension.
This is tragic, and essentially equals the dismantling of the pension system for new generations.
I don't disagree with you on that one, I myself might retire early on my private pensions savings for the same reason, if I can, I'm not sure I want to wait until age 72 (in my case).
So it is already split up like that a bit, except that everybody has the right to receive the base rate of the universal pension
Yeah, that can be a problem. I don't know the state of Denmark's public finances, but in Spain that is absolutely murdering them. Pension payments dwarf any other state expense, while our pensioners live lives far more comfortable than the rest of the population. A simple 5% reduction would open up so much public money.
This global report is very detailed and the only of its kind on the topic: https://www3.weforum.org/docs/Global_Social_Mobility_Report.pdf
That report is kind of useless when it comes to real life. Like Germany ranked high? Some of the hardest years of my life were in Germany because of how horrible the bureaucracy was. Yet it looked good on paper. Yet USA and Australia are ranked lower. They would be the first place I would go to move up the ladder. Where the wages are high and super easy to get ahead if you work.
Yeah let's use a random Redditor opinion rather than a global study
LOL!!!
With that out of the way, it's been alot worse, but if you aren't networked, emmigration is still the primary way for upward mobility.
The impact of increased access to public education after democratization, and joining the EU made it a lot easier than it was under the dictatorship, but it's still very much about who you know and in what family you were born.
Education and/or emigration are the only options.
In Spain education can get you from poor to middle class. But family connections/inheritance or just getting extremely lucky seem to be the main ways to higher classes. Like even people who do well with a company rarely share it with the employees of that company.
The better you do in a company, the more work they give to you.
This is true everywhere.
But in many countries the wealth generated by a company is much better shared among the employees. Like giving out stock is very rare even for high level employees in Spain
A gpod degree into a good master / MBA can land you in the upper class. At that point it becomes a matter of amassing and leveraging wealth to get into the echelons of those actually wealthy, but education can def place you in the top 1% of earners
Moving to little Portugal in the north of Europe is an option 😂
Soon.... Soon...
What is it with Luxembourg and Portugal ? You two love each other.
A lot
There was a time in the late 90's/early 2000 that was easier. Specially going to Uni bc there were grants/scholarships you could aply and internships were part of a university degree. The bologna treaty f'd up the internship part. Nowadays i know plenty of "kids" that don't go to uni bc they can't afford renting a room. When i was a student the max i paid for a room was 100€, now you can't find a a room in students city for less then 250€ and grants dont even cover that.
literally the same situation in Croatia
Emigration where ?
Anywhere. Before Brexit the UK was popular, but these days I guess France, Germany, Luxembourg and The Netherlands are the destinations of choice.
How do you elevate socially and economically in these other nations , compared to Portugal? I don't understand.
Because the massive increases of income can be leveraged for a far better life in Portugal, as can the connections made.
Some of the countries also have better lifts than Portugal.
Ah so you have to earn foreign money then return to Portugal.
I see.
You don't mean climb the social ladder in these countries
It comes down to these things :
If you don't have enough education, social support, mobility, or if you have mental health issues or are ND, you're screwed.
I'm never going to France, thank you.
We score among the world’s highest for social mobility according to rankings. But we still have evidence of nepotism in politics (out-of-touch Eton schoolboys run this country) and it’s getting harder to climb up the social ladder because of a housing crisis and inflation making everything more expensive.
Our best universities also disproportionately consist of privately educated students, and arguably, our grammar schools also exacerbate inequality rather than solve it.
In theory, nothing is stopping a working-class person from prioritising their education and making it in life. But our high cost of living can be drag on that, as well as the quality of educational institutions and opportunities wherever the person grew up.
A very underappreciated thing is the 'crabs in a bucket' mentality some communities can have. There are plenty of places where if you grow up with ambition and wanting to 'better' yourself then you are surrounded by people who will try and drag you down to their level, parents who won't support you, and an education system that often sets young people up to fail. I know so many people from my younger years who were all the right things - intelligent, motivated, etc - but who made bad choices in the absence of effective support structures and guidance.
Because class is so deeply cultural we recognise it more and are far more class-conscious than many other Western societies, but it has an effect of associating power with cultural traits most people don't have. I'm not necessarily going to aim for joining the political elite if doing so means I have to associate with people I don't find interesting or have much in common with.
Unfortunately this ‘tall poppy syndrome’ phenomena you’re talking about is present in New Zealand and Australia too, brought up from the Brit’s
It’s honestly pretty common in a lot of places and not at all unique to Britain and its former colonies. I’m originally from The Philippines and what we call “crab mentality” is a big problem there too, and we were never under the UK.
Absolutely. I see it featured prominently in the ghetto culture in the US, especially among the black population. It’s well known among school teachers in the inner cities. You’d think Obama’s presidency would have changed that and it probably did for some, but not enough.
To be clear “score among the world’s highest” means that the UK scored 21st in the global social mobility index (one of the worst scores in Western Europe), I don’t understand why Brits wave their flag at every occasion
https://www3.weforum.org/docs/Global_Social_Mobility_Report.pdf
The gap between the UK (21st place) and France (12th place) is about 2.5 points so it’s not as much a gap as it first appears. Certainly not as much as the gap between 1st and 10th place.
If you look at the Appendix the UK is ahead of France on things like access to technology, work opportunities and education access. France on the other hand is ahead with fair wage distribution and healthcare.
I was pointing you the needless flag waving… Do you see any other post starting that kind of first sentence?
21st is one of the world’s highest… I don’t understand why you’re triggered over a fact and proved my point in the meantime.
We don’t have a lot else to wave these days.
What flag waving? It's a statement of fact, followed up by an explanation of the many outstanding issues. It's hardly jingoism.
Ask yourself - why the need to compare to other countries, and why the need to say the U.K. is better than other countries?
Education is extremely affordable and of high quality. If you're well off, a full year of tuition is €1.100. If you or your family is struggling, this can get reduced to half that or even for only €130. Books can still be expensive, but a full year of studying, books included, will amount to €1.500, which is about 40% of a median wage for one month.
1100€?? Did it increase in the last years? I graduated from ULiege 5 years ago and it was 850€ per years.
It did. It was over the news, people were angry. I also based myself on KU Leuven's tuition, which was my university. I think it can differ slightly between unis
The problem is that a selection already happened before students go to university (or hoge school/haute école). So while universities are "relatively" cheap and not selective, at least on paper, most students will have already been pushed out of the system. While not perfect and questionable at moments, PISA scores have consistently revealed multiple times that both Walloon and Flemish systems show huge differences in PISA scores between the poorest and the richest students. The fact that some parents sleep in front of certain schools to guarantee their kids a place in that particular school and not in another one reflects the inequality between Belgian schools.
Does education always cause mobility though? It seems often that the majority of the successful after uni, already had money before starting it.
Education is free if you achieve certain scores on the exam. It's not so hard to met, there are a lot of options, and even if you didn't make it into the top Universities, you can always apply to some lower-ranking. Basically, that's how I got an education and steady job in IT - through free education in not the top, but still decent Univercity. Without it I should've settle for a much lower grade payed education in my hometown, and probably hadn't have such opportunuties I have now.
Joining the Army is a dangerous, but payment is well above the median. So yeah, it's an option too. Becoming is priest - well, your social status is proportional on how much you lick the butt of the bishop. Sometime literally. Becoming bishop is impossible without certain amount of intrigues.
Plus whereas the West is agonising over how to produce female engineers and software programmers you have them in abundance
Wow, that’s amazing.
Netherlands. Almost everyone goes to government funded primary schools. A good cito score gets you into a pre-university high school. Then university. You can then borrow your tuition and living costs.
Certain clubs and sports are considered more “high class” such as field hockey or tennis. However, you will find nowhere in the world where the barrier of entry to these sports is lower than in the Netherlands (both socially and financially). I mention this because how well you speak and who you grew up socializing does matter. Because people like to judge.
Some municipalities will give low income families a card that allows their children to go to movies and things like that.
They are really good. You can go to police and get a free flat and relatively good salary just for your loyalty. You can show more loyalty and get more.
My theory on the whole nature vs nurture debate : " either way, most of us are f*cked "
People act like family has no influence on them, but it matters, because your family and close community has an influence over the way you think and act and spend your money
If these "manual laborers" suddenly found themselves with more money, they would spend more money - and they wouldn't spend it on education or savings or otherwise SMART things to do - they would waste it on Useless things .
I've seen people who got their hands on money...did they send their kids to college or invest in their education ? No ! I've seen plenty of people who took the money and begun working on houses too big to ever finish, cars that they eventually can't afford to pay for it's fuel, and holidays ...
Honestly other than becoming a programmer (or maybe a soccer player ) you're stuck in the mud where you've started . Lots of people take on nursing education and temp work here and eventually move out west to perform nursing for more money ...
I can't comment on our "discriminated minority" , because that would be ray-cyst
Doctors children become children or equivalent . Manual laborer's children become manual laborers, gambling acum or maybe they actually rise up a bit...
Me ? I'm from manual laborers parents, I got a shitty useless degree that is still being looked down on by most of my family and got a pretty dull desk job unrelated to my field . It's progress the work conditions are better, but I'm barely making more than my parents ...
TLDR : social mobility in my country is awful/almost non-existent .
I'd say it's very good.
Russia destroyed our country over the decades so we basically started from scratch in the nineties, there was no generational wealth or anything. Those lovely neighbours took everything they could when they finally fucked off in '93.
Sure, it helps to know some people, but it's not necessary to become a director of a major company, start a successful business or become a leading politician.
In paper, Spain spends a lot of money on social stuff. In practice most of the budget goes to pensioners and for everything else the impact is a joke.
I remember at uni, my professor of economics was very angry about this. He spend many years trying to gather support to raise this issue to the public debate but he said he was blocked conciously several times.
Spain keeps its population poor basically by design. Most spaniards think that other surrounding countries are wealthier by some mythical hard-working ethos, politicians purity and what not, when in reality they live in a gigantic rent extraction scheme that involves housing and how """"welfare""""" is managed.
And this scheme seems to begin in other countries too, so watch out.
I know plenty of people who finished University and were from family of manual laborers. Manual labor jobs(factory, construction etc...) are most common here and Universities are free.
Becoming someone important? In most cities and towns you will struggle to find low paid office job without connections/nepotism. Most jobs on the market are for highly educated people with lot of work experience(like doctors) or for manual laborers(elementary education needed). So yeah getting some basic office job with high school diploma(maturita) is hard, even for people with Master's degree without connections/nepotism. Government office jobs are notorious for being like this and all the people I know, that got job there had some hardcore backing behind them. Bigwigs from various spheres of influence usually put their not so smart/useful kids into those jobs.
Easy, and that's why I like it best in Germany. If you're clever but come from a poor family, you can get into the same universities as the rich students. The universities are free of charge and on top of that you get enough money from the state to live on. Once you graduate, it doesn't matter where you come from. Of course, it's easier if your family has connections, but in general you don't need connections to become a lawyer, doctor or engineer at a renowned car manufacturer. Some Germans may disagree, but that's because they only know Germany. In neighboring countries - Poland, for example - there is no strong state support and you need a higher level of connections to get into well-known companies. Our CEOs and politicians mostly come from the middle class. But you're referring to the internal career, once you are within an organization. Your career path then depends on your skills and luck.
In Bosnia, there are not a lot of options
I would say, there are 4 options:
1) becoming an engineer and working for foreign company
2) selling land at hot location, eg to mine or to highway construction company
3) being a perfect asslicker (not good, but perfect, if you are just good, that's 500-650€ salary in some public company
4) being smart hard worker (whatever having a diploma or talent for blue collar things(plumber, welder, roof operator...)) and paying exit fee
It's not too bad in France, but like everywhere, there's lots of nepotism and meritocracy is often overblown. But certainly above average. Kids who work very hard at school can "make it".
Those struggling are essentially fucked though, unless they benefit from strong family support. Many kids don't, so there are still a lot of deprived areas in the country. It's not really la vie en rose for many, because France is far from perfect.
It's very good, the Netherlands is a very classless society and it's very easy to move upwards. The way up is either by education or entrepreneurship, clergy or military hold no higher status than other jobs here.
I guess there is still a divide between people who inherit houses and people who have to buy them themselves. Houses are extremely expensive in the Netherlands.
Agree, universities are accessible and provide great social mobility. Not every study though.
In theory, we have plenty. In practice, oh, well...If you are born between an alcoholic mother that's only good at sex and a presumed father that is a wife beater, then chances are you will end up just like them.
We do, however, have plenty of downwards mobility. Aka people coming from middle and upper middle class ending up as failures.
I think it’s quite good to a certain level. It’s definitely possible to study and have a degree while your parents did manual labor jobs for example. The other way is also possible. Lots of manual laborers like plumbers make good money. I agree we don’t have a class based society.
However, there is still a glass ceiling I once read. This has more to do with customs of which you grow up with or not. Small example, when you have a senior position in a company you might need to have diner with clients once in a while. Kids from highly educated and highly income families are likely used to go to a such restaurants and how things work there. Like having several courses, have a wine for each course and so on. When you come from a low income family you might be used to fast food chains only and you might be not familiar with how things work in a high ding restaurant. These is just a small example of course. But some people grow up with those customs needed to make it in such positions.
Not great I think. Education is poor in rural areas and many kids are forced to quit school altogether. If your parents can't even afford the bare minimum like acceptable clothes, school supplies, and whatnot... There are efforts from NGOs and charities to help these families but it's not enough.
There's also the issue of other children and teachers treating you differently if you're not "normal". In primary school, there was this one romani kid in my class who was obviously really poor, he had shabby clothes, and could barely read. The teachers treated him with disdain and the whole class avoided him completely. He eventually stopped coming to school. Granted, this was 20 years ago, but I don't think it's that much better now.
What about the ability to emigrate within Europe for higher paying jobs? I notice a lot of Romanians taking advantage of this and suspect it’s a way to move up.
I assumed the question was referring to social mobility within the country. Many people never come back - I know I would take that chance and never look back
For example, if someone is born into a struggling family of manual laborers (or a discriminated minority), but is smart and ambitious, how easy is it for them to get a good education and become someone important?
In Spain I'd say it's relatively easy (well not easy, but achievable by most with a good work ethic) to get to have a comfortable standard life. Basically everyone at high levels has some sort of connection to get there from family.
Education is free or very affordable but kinda worthless, probably over 50% of the young people have a degree but I don’t know how many work in the field they have a degree in.
Fastest social lifts are either corruption or real estate speculation- we have a bubble similar to the Chinese one, where housing is extremely expensive just because everyone is expecting it to be even more expensive, and prices are disconnected from every aspect that matters in any other market (location and such).
IT might be considered a good social lift, but I work in IT, I have a decent financial education, not spending on bullshit, yet still can’t afford to buy a house.
Small business is another perhaps better social lift, as people sell shit for 5x what it’s worth now.
It’s basically Nigeria here - poor as hell, expensive as hell.
The Nordics tends to be the best nations to work your way up. I understand free universities with admission based on academic merit is the biggest social mobilityenginge, followed by a social support system that allows you to fail and try again, rather than be runied by the first failiure.
In Germany it takes 6 generation to move out of poverty. It is worse than the US and other developed countries.
Access to education helps lot but it is not the only influence to social mobility.
Germany was rough for me as a young American who thought they could make a life there. The nepotism and bureaucracy is horrible to get ahead.
In Germany it takes 6 generation to move out of poverty.
I doubt. Unless you're talking about an unknown tradition of teenage pregnancies, a generation accounts for 25-30 years. Six generations ago, we were in the 1870s, Germany had just been founded and the industrial revolution was taking up pace even though most Germans were still farmers.
Five generations ago, people were pondering the idea of colonies; four generations ago, Germany was completely bombed out with many places having more than 50% of houses and apartments destroyed and uninhabitable. Three and two generations ago, a quarter of the German populace lived in a satellite of the USSR, arguably not the place that created abundance of wealth...
You are free to doubt it but it is the official statistic.
A typical poor child in Germany would need 180 years to reach the average German income, while one in the United States would need 150 to reach the average US income. The OECD says that needs to change.
Children in low-income families in Germany tend to have a harder time moving up the social ladder than children in equivalent circumstances in other industrialized countries, according to a new study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
This measures how long it takes for the offspring of a family from the lowest income decile (lowest 10 percent) to reach the average income. In Germany, this currently amounts to 6 generations, which speaks for low social mobility in comparison.
16,6 percent of German population living in poverty in 2021
https://www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/german-expat-news/poverty-rate-germany-reaches-new-heights
And scholars add a caveat:
The OECD estimates, as other available evidence on social mobility in Germany, are subject to considerable uncertainty. Like many other studies, the OECD measures social mobility by the association of parental and child income, using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), the main household panel study in Germany.
While the GSOEP contains rich information on the surveyed individuals, and allows linking of children to their parents, its key limitation is its small sample size. Mobility statistics estimated from the GSOEP data are therefore sensitive to small variations in sampling criteria, resulting in a wide range of plausible estimates (Schnitzlein 2016). This sensitivity is reflected by the fact that, using the same data, several studies report substantially higher estimates of income mobility than those reported by the OECD (Hufe et al. 2018).
You are free to share the information of GSOEP studies.
? It’s common to move up in the US. Look at Obama and Bill Clinton. They came from low income, fatherless homes. And most CEOs in the big tech companies are immigrants. Sure if you are born into old money you can probably keep it, but there aren’t that many of those types. Or maybe your comment didn’t mean to say it is difficult in the US and I misunderstood your comment.
I think they mean it’s worse in Germany
That is what I mean indeed.
In Denmark, loads of options for lifting yourself out of poverty or transcending your social background. Still social heritage is one the main predictors of future income and health. And it’s getting worse as the older generations are leaving the workforce and we (apparently…) need to cut back on spending in early childcare and education in favour of public pension and end-of-life care for the large generations from the 40s and 50s.