Social mobility by area
This section shows how different areas in the UK are ranked for 5 different measures of social mobility.
Composite measures by region
The 5 composite measures of social mobility broken down by region are:
- Precarious situations – young people in difficult economic circumstances
- Promising prospects – young people in good economic circumstances
- Socio-cultural advantage – factors that can help people’s chances of social mobility
- Childhood poverty and disadvantage – factors that can reduce people’s chances of social mobility
- Research and development – economic opportunity, innovation and business location, and their effect on social mobility
Each of these measures combines data from 3 indicators into a single ‘composite’ score to give a more reliable picture of geographical mobility patterns.
For each composite measure, 41 regions in the UK are ranked from the lowest to highest composite score. They are then divided into 5 equally-sized groups (‘quintiles’), from 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest).
We should emphasise that these are purely descriptive statistics and that we are not yet in a position to claim any causal effects of regions on outcomes. And because these statistics are based on sample surveys, they are affected by sampling error.
The 41 regions
We use the ‘international territorial levels’ (ITLs) system developed by the Office for National Statistics. This divides the UK into:
- 12 regions (‘ITL1’)
- 41 regions made up of counties and groups of counties (‘ITL2’)
- 179 smaller regions (‘ITL3’)
The data by geography uses the 41 ‘ITL2’ regions. Each region has between 800,000 and 3 million residents.
The data is based on survey data, mainly from the Labour Force Survey (LFS). In future, we hope to combine more years of LFS data to provide breakdowns by the 179 ‘ITL3’ regions.
The 41 ITL2 regions are as follows.
North East (England):
North West (England):
Yorkshire and The Humber:
East Midlands (England):
West Midlands (England):
East of England:
London:
- Inner London - West
- Inner London - East
- Outer London - East and North East
- Outer London - South
- Outer London - West and North West
South East (England):
- Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire
- Surrey, East and West Sussex
- Hampshire and Isle of Wight
- Kent
South West (England):
- Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Bristol and Bath
- Dorset and Somerset
- Cornwall and Isles of Scilly
- Devon
Scotland:
- Eastern Scotland
- Highlands and Islands
- North Eastern Scotland
- West Central Scotland
- Southern Scotland
Wales:
Please see our technical annex and main report for more information.