Dr Emma Gorman receives new grant to study social mobility in Britain

Dr Emma Gorman, a Principal Research Fellow in the Centre for Employment Research, has received a significant grant to study the chances of moving up the economic and social ladder for Gen Z and Millennials compared to previous generations.

The grant was awarded by the Economic and Social Research Council, the UK’s largest funder of economic, social, behavioural and human data science. It supports the research project titled Children of the 1990s – Extending Understanding of Social Mobility in England and Wales. Co-Investigators are Professor Franz Buscha from the University of Westminster and Professor Patrick Sturgis from the London School of Economics and Political Science, along with CER researcher Dr. Min Zhang.

This grant will investigate whether the life-chances of children born in the 1990s have improved or deteriorated compared to their predecessors, and how characteristics of local areas such as industrial composition, school quality and social capital relate to the life-chances of residents. Dr Gorman will use data from censuses between 1971 and 2021 to further understanding of social mobility which refers to how people’s jobs and standards of living are shaped by the social and economic context of their upbringing.

Currently, very little is known about the social mobility experiences of recent generations. This is primarily because high-quality data that is required for the analysis of intergenerational social mobility has not been available. To fill this gap in research, Dr Gorman will utilise new data from the Office for National Statistics Longitudinal Study (ONS-LS).

Dr Gorman said: “Young people in Britain today have lived through the Great Recession, the COVID-19 pandemic and stagnating economic conditions. This grant represents an exciting opportunity to generate timely evidence on the social and economic prospects of these younger cohorts, and support policymakers in devising new approaches to reduce inequalities both within and between generations.”