Is social mobility a good thing?

Matthew Taylor the former Blair official has been doing high quality blogging for a while now. He is worth seeking out at his new home.

His latest post provides some thoughts on social mobility. He asks an important question - is social mobility a good thing?

If the aim is to increase public contentment, he notes, then making society more mobile is likely to run counter to this aim. Why? Because people are loss averse.

So those threatened with a loss of social status are likely to view their prospective loss with greater alarm and unhappiness than the happiness caused someone with the prospect of rising. And this is a theme of the Happiness literature too. Oliver James, say, is essentially in favour of people knowing their place.

Naturally, this doesn't reflect the contentment caused by the greater efficiency of a more mobile society. This society will provide a higher quality of goods and services. And it doesn't, I think, properly account for the depressive effect of learned helplessness.

Taylor's post does, however, cause one to question whether social mobility is the best way to describe what we are after.