Meritocracy

Meritocracy The Failure of Meritocracy

By JOHN JERRIM

Family Background and Success

To what extent does family background influence the success a person has later in life? This is a question of utmost importance across a number of developed countries, but perhaps nowhere more than the US.

The success of the US throughout the 20th century was built largely on the American Dream, the idea that the social position one obtains depends only upon individual talent and motivation. But can America be considered a meritocracy in the 21st century? Sadly, recent evidence makes grim reading for the US. To measure the relative opportunities of those born into advantaged and disadvantaged homes, economists have investigated the link between amount of money earned by fathers and amount earned by their sons. If the link is strong, social status tends to be preserved across generations. But children from poor homes struggle to move up the ladder. The graph below illustrates such estimates for the US and a host of other developed countries. If your father doesn’t earn a lot of money, chances are you won’t either. Even more striking is the fact that this seems to be a bigger problem in the US than elsewhere.

LINK BETWEEN FATHER AND SON INCOME ACROSS A RANGE OF DEVELOPED COUNTRIES BLANDEN (2009)

Most Fair Least Fair

Clearly, the US can no longer be considered a meritocracy. But what’s stopping disadvantaged children from getting well-paid jobs? Experts almost unanimously agree that one factor stands out: education. By outperforming less fortunate peers at school, children from affluent backgrounds develop skills that are required for entry into the best universities, impacting their ability to pursue the most sought-after careers. Recent research has shown that this is a bigger problem in the US than other countries. The graph below shows the difference in reading test scores between 15-year-olds from poor and rich homes. Long bars indicate a bigger impact of family background and a less “fair” society. In the US, young people brought up in advantageous circumstances are almost 3 school years ahead of their disadvantaged peers. This link is much stronger than in many other countries and clearly brings into question America’s reign as the “land of opportunity.” •

DIFFERENCE IN READING TEST SCORES BETWEEN CHILDREN FROM ADVANTAGED AND DISADVANTAGED HOMES JERRIM (2012)

Denmark Finland Canada Sweden Germany Australia Norway France Italy UK USA Brazil

0 0,1 0,2 0,3 0,4 0,5 0,6 USA France UK Australia sweden Germany Italy Netherlands Spain Denmark Canada Finland

1,0 1,4 1,8 2,2 2,6 3,0

The Decline of the American Meritocracy

By HAROLD R. KERBO For almost two centuries the world has viewed the US as the land of opportunity. But this has sadly turned into more of a myth, reflected in America’s growing inequality, a shrinking middle class and stagnate social mobility compared to other advanced industrial nations. The primary watershed for these changes is centered around 1980 when Reaganomics, or neoliberal political shift, occurred. Before this, income inequality in the US was fairly average compared to other advanced nations. While the bottom 20% of American wage earners received a low 4.7% of the annual national income, the top 20% received about 4%. In Europe, 5-8% of the income was going to the bottom 20% of the population, and 38-40% of the income was going to the top 20%. These figures remain little changed for European countries today. But in the US income inequality has gone up every year since 1980. The top 10% of the population alone received almost 40% of the income. In terms of wealth, just after WWII the top 1% of Americans held 20% of wealth, while by 2004 the top 1% held almost 40%. For the first time, in 2006 a World Bankcommissioned study was able to estimate percentages of wealth held by various segments of the population in many countries around the world. The top 10%

Edgar Angelone

was born and raised in Argentina. He has steadfastly pursued his own photography vision and has acquired a reputation for his exquisite platinum and gelatin silver traditional black and white prints. 01 Country Road II, Humboldt Bay, California, USA, Gelatin silver print, edition of 35 02 Pier and boat, Point Reyes, California, USA, Gelatin Silver Print

Is the "American Dream", based on meritocracy, in crisis?

of Americans owned 70% of the wealth in the country. By the late 1990s, the US middle class (25% above and 25% below median income) had shrunk to 27% since 1980, while the middle class had increased in most of Europe. In Germany, Norway and Sweden, the middle class was growing in size during this time, reaching 40-50% of the population. The US shrinking middle class is largely related to changing occupational structure. Considering the increase in new jobs during the 1960s and 1970s, the net increase of new jobs was highest among those paying middle and higher income wages. From 1992-2006 the net increase was highest for those paying low wages and the next highest for jobs paying the highest wages. The net increase in middle paying jobs was by far the lowest. As these figures suggest, upward social mobility (the essence of what is meant by a meritocracy) has been falling dramatically. Pre-1980 and perhaps more than a century before, with the exception of the Great Depression, more people had enjoyed upward social mobility than those experiencing downward or no mobility. When measured by income inheritance just after the turn of the 21st century, the inheritance rate for the US was 43% compared to the 20% range for countries such as Finland and Sweden, and 34% for Germany. Only the UK had more intergenerational inheritance of income than the US at 57%. By the end of the 1920s the US had reached a level of inequality close to what it is today. The Great Depression and Roosevelt’s New Deal policies began to bring down inequality. The continuation of these policies, plus America’s global economic dominance after WWII, continued to keep it down until the economic crisis of the 1970s and then 1980’s Reaganomics. The Obama administration knows the danger of these inequalities and the loss of meritocracy and has made this an issue in the 2012 election.