One of the central questions in sociological studies on social mobility is whether life opportunities are explained by social background or by individual merit. In other words, whether the social positions that people occupy are more related to their family background or to their own capabilities, skills, or personal endeavour. Some sociologists, such as Bell (1976), Dahrendorf (1962) and Lipset (1987), have theorized regarding the rise of meritocracy in the second half of the 20th century. In contrast, others, such as Erik O. Wright (1992), closer to the Marxist tradition, would argue that class divisions and differences persist decade after decade. 

Despite this being such a central question for theorists and for society overall, the truth is that, until now, it had never been tested empirically, largely due to the lack of data on skills and intergenerational social mobility on a comparative level. This is why this research has renewed interest and it sheds some light upon a classic question that until now has not been completely resolved.

In a fully meritocratic society, an individual’s social position would be explained solely by their own capabilities, their endeavours or their perseverance, and not by the socioeconomic circumstances of their family of birth. This would obviously serve to explain both upward and downward social mobility alike. In other words, meritocracy would mean that talented people born into economically disadvantaged families would have the same possibilities of rising to high social positions that children from a wealthy background who are less talented or with fewer capabilities would have of descending to lower positions on the social ladder.

An initial analysis of the set of countries considered offers a somewhat pessimistic scenario from the viewpoint of meritocracy. As reflected in the left-hand side of figure 1, the children of parents with higher education levels have more possibilities of accessing management positions than the children of parents with little or no formal education, whether we are comparing people with low skills (magenta bars) or high skills (blue bars). Similarly, but inversely, the children of parents with higher education levels have fewer possibilities than others of accessing working-class occupations, even when they have a low level of skills (right-hand side of figure 1). 

In summary, these data show that individuals from privileged social backgrounds have greater possibilities of reaching management positions than the rest and are more protected from descending to the working class, even if they have a low level of cognitive skills. In contrast, the children of parents without higher levels of education have much higher possibilities of ending up in the working class and it is more difficult for them to access management occupations or highly qualified professional positions. 

It is true that upward mobility is not impossible: those with high capabilities, who are the children of parents with little or no formal education, do reach management and professional positions, although their possibilities are relatively modest, and certainly much lower than those of individuals whose parents have higher levels of education. In other words, although the opportunities are far from equal for all, having high cognitive skills does help somewhat in improving the social position of people who come from less advantaged backgrounds and does reduce the differences with people who come from a more privileged social position.
 

In all cases, social background was measured based on the levels of education of parents, and social destination using a reduced version of the well-known class scheme of Erickson and Goldthorpe (1992), in which the service class refers to management positions and those of highly qualified professionals. Cognitive skills were measured through the results in numerical skills tests of the PIAAC study, equivalent to the OECD’s PISA study, but for the adult population. These skills are analysed in relative terms, in other words, identifying as people with “high skills” those who are situated in the upper third of the total distribution.

For now, only a general view has been shown of the opportunities for social mobility in a set of countries. Next, to determine the relative influence of background and skills on upward and downward mobility in different contexts, the previous model has been replicated for each of the 21 advanced democracies considered. Figure 2 presents the differences, in percentage points, in possibilities for access to each social position for the children of university-educated parents with respect to the children of parents with little or no formal education. In other words, both the advantage that is represented by a privileged family background in access to high social positions (figure 2A) and the protection from family background in access to low social positions (figure 2B). 

In all countries, the children of parents with higher education levels have more possibilities of ending up in higher social positions than those whose parents do not have that level of education (in other words, they have a greater advantage), and equally they are more protected from ending up in low social positions. However, there is a great diversity in the influence of social background on mobility from one country to another. In Nordic countries such as Sweden, Norway, and Finland, mobility between positions is less conditioned by social class, something that also occurs in other places such as Canada and the Netherlands. In all these countries, situated on the right-hand side of figures 2A and 2B, both the relative advantages of upward mobility for people from advantaged social background is most marked. For example, in Spain, individuals who are the children of university- educated parents have a 23.5-percentage-point greater probability of accessing high social positions than those with similar characteristics, skills included, who are the children of parents with little or no formal education.

But the definitive test of whether a society is meritocratic is whether the children of privileged families can descend socially and end up in elementary occupations or with low skill levels, which is exactly what is explored in figure 2B. Here too, marked social differences are observed, because in all countries individuals with more privileged backgrounds are much more protected from downward movement to lower social positions. It is as though a kind of “glass floor” exists that protects individuals from more privileged backgrounds from descending the social ladder, something that even the Nordic countries, characterised by their egalitarianism and opportunities for social mobility, cannot escape. Situated at the opposite extreme, with major effects of social background, would be the countries of Eastern and Southern Europe, and very especially Italy and Spain, which again appear as exceptionally immobile societies where family background protects most against low social positions. Again, in Spain the children of university-educated parents have significantly fewer possibilities (24.3 percentage points difference) of ending up in low social positions than the children of people with little or no formal education.

In general, in the majority of countries the effect of family background on mobility is reduced for those with high skills levels. However, in Japan, the United States, and the United Kingdom, the class effect is more marked for those with high levels of cognitive skills. The pattern is very similar when other more restrictive mobility measures are used such as, for example, comparing the opportunities for social mobility among individuals with low cognitive skills whose parents have higher levels of education to individuals with high cognitive skills whose parents do not have higher levels of education. Equally, nor are there clear indications of greater social fluidity between younger cohorts, born after the establishment of the welfare state in Europe, and those born earlier. Everything indicates, in short, that despite the differences between countries, in all of them family background has a lot of weight in opportunities for upward and downward social mobility.

To now, individual skills have been considered as a whole without differentiating between those that are strictly cognitive (here measured through scores for questions of a numerical type) and others that are non-cognitive (here measured through three variables that capture motivation, initiative and individual ambition). On the latter, also called “soft skills”, Nobel Economics laureate James Heckman has worked in depth in recent years as important determinants of achievement over the course of life (Carneiro & Heckman, 2003; Cunha & Heckman, 2007). What is interesting for the study of skills and social mobility is whether complementarity exists between them, in other words, whether the non-cognitive skills can compensate the lack or limitation of cognitive skills (or vice versa). 

One way of identifying what type of skills is most important is by comparing the effect of different combinations on possibilities for social mobility. Figure 3 analyses precisely this over the possibilities of social ascent. It confirms that, whatever the family social background, those who combine high levels of cognitive and non cognitive skills have many more opportunities for upward social mobility. In intermediate cases it is individuals with high non-cognitive skills who experience the greatest possibilities of upward social mobility (even if they have relatively low levels of cognitive skills) more than those who have the opposite combination, in other words, low non- cognitive and high cognitive skills. In fact, the advantage of having high non-cognitive skills is localized among people of less privileged backgrounds and not so much among those of more privileged origins. This suggests, in short, that when an individual does not have high levels in both types of skills, the non-cognitive aspects such as ambition and initiative take on more importance for social mobility than the strictly cognitive skills.

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