IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/loceco/v33y2018i6p655-666.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

What Would a Society Look Like Where Children’s Life Chances Were Really Fair?

Author

Listed:
  • Gideon Calder

Abstract

An increasingly widely used term in recent decades, the central place of ‘life chances’ in UK policy has been confirmed by the retrospective renaming of the Life Chances Act 2010 (formerly the Child Poverty Act 2010). Alongside this, the notion that we should promote fairer life chances has gained purchase across the political spectrum. Yet this notion is loose and ill-defined. This article unpacks the term from the point of view of children. It highlights problems involved with defining and measuring fair life chances for children in suitably broad and non-partial ways, and argues for a plural measure. It outlines two separate dimensions where questions of fairness might apply, in terms of the life course, showing how a suitably supple conception of fair life chances would need to apply across both dimensions. And in light of this account, it suggests three policy approaches – to poverty, childcare, and the configuration of opportunities – which would help establish a society where life chances were really fair: not sufficient, but vital contributions. Overall, the article suggests that a commitment to making life chances fairer requires considerably more radical steps than the term’s recent handling in political discourse would imply.

Suggested Citation

  • Gideon Calder, 2018. "What Would a Society Look Like Where Children’s Life Chances Were Really Fair?," Local Economy, London South Bank University, vol. 33(6), pages 655-666, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:loceco:v:33:y:2018:i:6:p:655-666
    DOI: 10.1177/0269094218803553
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0269094218803553
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0269094218803553?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jo Blanden, 2009. "How Much Can We Learn from International Comparisons of Intergenerational Mobility?," CEE Discussion Papers 0111, Centre for the Economics of Education, LSE.
    2. Jo Blanden & Paul Gregg & Lindsey Macmillan, 2010. "Intergenerational Persistence in Income and Social Class: The Impact of Within-Group Inequality," The Centre for Market and Public Organisation 10/230, The Centre for Market and Public Organisation, University of Bristol, UK.
    3. Richard Breen, 2010. "Social Mobility and Equality of Opportunity Geary Lecture Spring 2010," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 41(4), pages 413-428.
    4. Jo Blanden & Paul Gregg & Lindsey Macmillan, 2013. "Intergenerational persistence in income and social class: the effect of within-group inequality," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 176(2), pages 541-563, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bertha Rohenkohl, 2019. "Intergenerational Income Mobility in the UK:New evidence using the BHPS and Understanding Society," Working Papers 2019017, The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics.
    2. Timothy Smeeding, 2013. "GINI DP 89: On the relationship between income inequality and intergenerational mobility," GINI Discussion Papers 89, AIAS, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies.
    3. Catherine Haeck & Pierre Lefebvre, 2020. "The Evolution of Cognitive Skills Inequalities by Socioeconomic Status across Canada," Working Papers 20-04, Research Group on Human Capital, University of Quebec in Montreal's School of Management.
    4. Paul Gregg & Lindsey Macmillan & Claudia Vittori, 2017. "Moving Towards Estimating Sons' Lifetime Intergenerational Economic Mobility in the UK," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 79(1), pages 79-100, February.
    5. Chris Belfield & Claire Crawford & Ellen Greaves & Paul Gregg & Lindsey Macmillan, 2017. "Intergenerational income persistence within families," IFS Working Papers W17/11, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    6. Brian Bell & Jack Blundell & Stephen Machin, 2023. "Where is the Land of Hope and Glory? The geography of intergenerational mobility in England and Wales," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 125(1), pages 73-106, January.
    7. Jo Blanden & Lindsey Macmillan, 2014. "Education and Intergenerational Mobility: Help or Hindrance?," CASE Papers case179, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, LSE.
    8. Jo Blanden & Robert Haveman & Timothy Smeeding & Kathryn Wilson, 2014. "Intergenerational Mobility in the United States and Great Britain: A Comparative Study of Parent–Child Pathways," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 60(3), pages 425-449, September.
    9. Jake Anders & John Jerrim & Lindsey Macmillan, 2022. "Socio-economic inequality in young people's financial capabilities," CEPEO Working Paper Series 22-03, UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities, revised Feb 2022.
    10. Andros Kourtellos & Chih Ming Tan & Steven N. Durlauf, 2022. "The Great Gatsby Curve," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 14(1), pages 571-605, August.
    11. Xu Sun & Xiaolu Lei & Baisen Liu, 2021. "Mobility Divergence in China? Complete Comparisons of Social Class Mobility and Income Mobility," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 153(2), pages 687-709, January.
    12. Sreevidya Ayyar & Uta Bolt & Eric French & Cormac O'Dea, 2024. "Imagine your life at 25: Gender conformity and later-life outcomes," IFS Working Papers W24/32, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    13. Markus Jäntti & Stephen P. Jenkins, 2013. "Income Mobility," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 607, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    14. Bell, Brian & Blundell, Jack & Machin, Stephen, 2018. "The changing geography of intergenerational mobility," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 91714, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    15. Amaral, Ernesto F. L. & Yen, Shih-Keng & Wang, Sharron Xuanren, 2019. "A meta-analysis of the association between income inequality and intergenerational mobility," OSF Preprints 8qmhw, Center for Open Science.
    16. Kanabar, Ricky & Gregg, Paul, 2022. "Intergenerational wealth transmission and mobility in Great Britain: what components of wealth matter?," ISER Working Paper Series 2022-02, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    17. Uta Bolt & Eric French & Jamie Hentall-MacCuish & Cormac O'Dea, 2021. "The intergenerational elasticity of earnings: exploring the mechanisms," IFS Working Papers W21/07, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    18. Eyles, Andrew & Blanden, Jo & Machin, Stephen, 2021. "Trends in intergenerational home ownership and wealth transmission," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 114426, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    19. Lasierra-Asun, Diana, 2023. "La clase social como elemento limitador de la movilidad, la inmovilidad persistente [Social class as a limiting element of mobility, The persistent immobility]," MPRA Paper 117093, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Paul Gregg & Lindsey MacMillan & Claudia Vittori, 2014. "Moving Towards Estimating Lifetime Intergenerational Economic Mobility in the UK," The Centre for Market and Public Organisation 14/332, The Centre for Market and Public Organisation, University of Bristol, UK.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:loceco:v:33:y:2018:i:6:p:655-666. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/index.shtml .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.