00:00 Pictures:
Robin Naylor and son playing Monopoly
John
Taylor and Son butcher’s shop
John
Earl and Son Estate Agents
Robin
Naylor at computer – pan round to photograph of son
New
York GVs
Guide Voice: How we start out in life is down
to luck, a roll of the dice. Some get the chance to start at
Mayfair, others begin on the old Kent road.
Generally parents try to give their children a helping hand to
create a better life for themselves, but now in findings just
presented to the Royal Economic Society, researchers at the
University of Warwick have uncovered a closer relationship between
the earnings of a father and those of his son and nowhere is that
more apparent than in the USA, the so-called “land of
opportunity”.
00:27 SOT Professor Robin Naylor, Department of
Economics, University of Warwick - “Our
research shows us that in comparison to other countries people in
the US are much more able if they are from an affluent backgrounds
to promote the earnings prospects of their children .It seems as if
in the US, parents are able to make investments care for their
children promote their children in various ways which coming from
the appropriate background enable them to do very well themselves
in later life.”
00:46 Pictures:
George W Bush with father George Bush Senior
Wall
Street GVs
SOT: George W Bush - “It’s a
big plus to be George Bush’s son.”
Guide Voice: Two US presidents called George
Bush who are also father and son, is not surprising according to
their findings, coming from a wealthy background in the United
States it is actually statistically harder to fail, but the reverse
is not true.
01:11 SOT Professor Robin Naylor, Department of
Economics, University of Warwick -“What’s
unusual about the US is that even stronger than
that persistence of among those in affluent backgrounds is the
persistence of those in poor backgrounds. One conclusion from this
is that the concept of the American dream or of American
exceptionalism as its sometimes put, or in simple terms the rags to
riches story is actually less likely in the US than it is in the
other countries that we’ve looked at.”
01:38 Pictures:
New York GVs
Stockholm
GVs
Guide Voice: Despite the rags to riches image
of the “Land of Opportunity”, it is actually twice as
hard for the son of a poor man to improve on his father’s
earnings…
In fact it is easier to get ahead if your father was in the
lowest 20% of earners in the UK than it is in the USA, but across
the Nordic countries, which were included in the research, children
of parents in the lowest earning brackets, actually do improve on
their inherited lot, more than those in the USA and UK, now the
search is on to understand why.
02:07 SOT Professor Robin Naylor, Department of
Economics, University of Warwick - “The Nordic
countries differ in two fundamental ways, one is that generally
there is more mobility, and secondly in particular there is more
mobility from the bottom end. So that the family you are born into
if you are born into a relatively poor background, that seems to
have far less effect on your later outcomes than would be the case
in other countries that we have looked at, the UK and the US for
example.”
02:35 Pictures:
Stockholm GVs
John
Taylor and Son butcher’s shop
John
Earl and Son Estate Agents
Robin
Naylor and son playing
Monopoly
Guide voice: The implication is that in the
Nordic countries educational policies make a difference, but is
that the whole story? Now the researchers want to examine what
other key drivers may contribute to these patterns in different
countries, whether your dad’s a butcher, a hotelier, or an
estate agent. How exactly does he pass on his earnings potential to
you?
Will Professor Naylor’s son Mathew benefit from his
father’s academic environment and learning, or will his
dad’s connections get him a leg up in life?
03:02 SOT: Professor Robin Naylor
- “We’ve focused to some extent our work
so far on differences in educational policies and institutions we
think we could go much further in that. We also want to look at the
extent to which other attributes of people contribute towards their
later outcomes so linkages between families in health outcomes,
differences across people in their what’s sometimes referred
to as their soft skills so maybe their non- cognitive abilities
rather than purely academic or scholastic
attributes.”
03:32 Pictures:
Economics books
Robin
Naylor and son playing Monopoly
Guide voice: Their findings to date have shown
that there is still more to learn, going forward they may be able
to prove or disprove the value of different educational
reforms for example, and help to develop accurate social policies
that really do create a more level playing field in the future.
Ends: 03:50
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