The chances of social ascent have been intact in Switzerland since the 1980s. Social mobility is even exceptionally high in international comparison, according to a study, while it has notably retreated in the United States.
Researchers from the Institute of Swiss Economic Policy (IWP) of the University of Lucerne analyzed for the first time, from current data, the evolution of the chances of social promotion in Switzerland. Their work, the results of which were published on Monday, refer to the ‘American dream’ undermined.
In the United States, in the 1980s, income concentration increased sharply while in parallel, social mobility has decreased significantly. The researchers wanted to know what it was in Switzerland, where income inequalities have hardly changed since the 1980s.
Frem income
To understand if this stability is also reflected in social mobility, the study analyzes the income of siblings over a period of forty years, in order to measure the influence of the family on future income. Brothers and sisters generally share the same parental home, but also the same social environment and evolve within similar networks.
The similarity of the income of the brothers and sisters is therefore taken as a reliable indicator of the influence of the parental home on the life course. The more comparable the income of the brothers and sisters, the stronger the influence of the family environment – and the lower social mobility.
On average, only 17% of income is attributable to the family environment – a figure that has never exceeded 21% in the past forty years, the study has concluded. At the same time, the concentration of income of the richest 10% remains stable, around 30%.
Switzerland displays exceptionally high levels of social mobility compared to international standards – higher than those of the Scandinavian countries, according to the IWP. This suggests a close link between the distribution of income and equal opportunities.
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