Social mobility is an issue that most countries around the world are grappling with, especially as there are worrying signs that the past few years have seen a worrying decline in the ability of people to progress.
A 2020 report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Social Mobility Commission highlighted the clear regional variations across the United Kingdom, with deprivation in some areas so persistent that families are being locked into disadvantage for several generations.
The report highlights that the key to social mobility is that people get a fair chance of success in life, regardless of whether their parents are rich or poor, or they live in the smallest town or the largest city.
Social mobility coldspots
It’s a finding reaffirmed by a recent study from social mobility charities The Talent Tap and The Aldridge Foundation, which found that rural and coastal areas of the UK often trap residents and leave companies with an insufficiently diverse workforce.
The study suggests that rural and coastal regions are beset by a detrimental blend of low parental incomes, a dearth of work experience opportunities, and deficient professional networks, resulting in a twofold likelihood of youths abandoning their ambitious career pursuits when compared to their urban and suburban counterparts.
According to the latest official statistics from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), approximately 2.2 million juveniles reside in rural and seaside areas that frequently grapple with elevated joblessness rates and the sparse presence of prominent employers.
Rural inequality
The authors suggest that too often the focus of work on tackling inequality is in larger cities, leaving what is often much greater inequalities in rural areas untouched. Indeed, the rate of graduates among rural youngsters was found to be 20% lower than for inner-city youngsters, with this gap growing even wider among postgraduates.
An alarming 51% of rural youth admit to being deterred from applying to university due to exorbitant expenses and apprehensions about relocating to urban areas. Moreover, 56% have altered their career aspirations to align with the limited options accessible in their localities, with a third stating the scarcity or complete absence of opportunities to pursue their professional objectives in their hometowns.
These statistics serve as a cause for concern, highlighting the challenges faced by rural communities in providing equitable access to higher education and fulfilling employment prospects.
“Talent is distributed evenly but opportunity is not,” the researchers explain. “Greater representation of young people from diverse backgrounds in business is a win-win situation: both helping firms ensure their services and products are relevant to their target customers and fuelling social mobility in the country’s coldspots.”
Early divide
What’s more, the study suggests that this urban/rural divide begins very early in people’s lives. For instance, only 19% of rural adolescents have the opportunity to engage in internships, compared to 39% of their urban counterparts. Additionally, less than a third (31%) of rural youth benefit from crucial in-person work experience, which can lead to valuable career contacts, as opposed to 34% of city children.
Disturbingly, 19% of rural students received inadequate career guidance at school and selected a subject of their liking, a substantially higher percentage than the 13% who were treated this way in urban areas. This bias continues into university, with 42% of rural students not participating in any form of internship or work experience, twice the proportion of urban students who lacked this essential resource (21%).
Notably, while nearly half (46%) of city students were able to leverage their familial connections to secure internships and work experience, fewer than a third (32%) of rural and coastal students had access to a professional network to do the same. These findings underscore the need for concerted efforts to promote equitable access to career-aligned work experience and guidance for rural youth.
Exacerbating the problem
The data also suggests that businesses may be making matters worse due to the way in which they allocate these work experience opportunities. For instance, less than half of the large companies the researchers spoke to thought they were doing enough to enable social mobility.
Despite 83% of large firms offering work experience, only 30% have a nationwide outreach program aimed at reaching rural youth. Instead, 42% of firms focus on providing work experience opportunities exclusively to local youth, thereby conferring a significant advantage to urban and suburban children.
The situation is even more dire for small businesses, which constitute 99.9% of UK enterprises. Although nearly half (47%) of these firms believe they support social mobility, only 5% provide work experience outside of their immediate locality, and 63% do not offer any work experience at all.
Barriers to progress
Furthermore, fewer than a third of all firms reimburse travel costs or provide payment for work experience and internships, and only a third cover accommodation expenses, which places rural youth at a disadvantage. For low-income households, it is impossible to bear the upfront costs since one-third of the firms that provide financial support do so retroactively.
Although some companies have attempted to bridge the gap by offering virtual work experience, rural teens still prefer in-person work experience opportunities to build their network of contacts, as indicated by a nine-fold preference for the same.
As a result of these factors, a quarter (23%) of rural and coastal youth refrain from applying for potentially life-changing work experience in the city due to financial constraints. The study highlights the pressing need for companies to provide equitable access to work experience and to ensure that they are not solely concentrated in metropolitan areas.
“A third of firms say relevant work experience is a factor in who they hire, so missing out has a huge impact on young people,” the researchers explain. “If companies really believe in diversity and equality, much more needs to be done to target young people from the far-flung rural and coastal areas into high-quality employment.”
