Across many developed societies, social mobility is harder to sustain. Children’s prospects remain strongly shaped by family background, even as educational levels have risen.
In the US, a highly cited study by Harvard economist Raj Chetty and colleagues found that absolute income mobility – defined as the share of children earning more than their parents – fell from about 90 per cent for those born in 1940 to around 50 per cent for those born in the 1980s.
This piece was first published in The Straits Times on 10 Feb 2026.