Poverty Safari: Understanding the Anger of Britain's Underclass
by Darren McGarvey · 2 Nov 2017 · 224pp · 73,737 words
that predispose them to stress. Zero have gone to university. Zero are on the housing ladder. Zero have any savings. Zero have access to a bank of Mum and Dad. Zero are involved with an activist group. Zero are active members of a political party. Zero regularly visit libraries or places of cultural interest. Zero
The Class Ceiling: Why It Pays to Be Privileged
by Sam Friedman and Daniel Laurison · 28 Jan 2019
one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven 1 Getting in Getting on Untangling the class pay gap Inside elite firms The Bank of Mum and Dad A helping hand Fitting in View from the top Self-elimination Class ceilings: A new approach to social mobility Conclusion 29 45 57 71 87
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‘merit’, and how it is connected to a person’s background, is central to this book. Indeed, the themes that flanked Mark’s trajectory – the Bank of Mum and Dad, informal sponsorship, the luxury of fitting in – were echoed throughout our interviews. And as we argue in the chapters that follow, each play a critical
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‘sorting’ mechanisms are neither innocent nor ‘meritocratic’, we argue. For example, the ability to forge a career in London is often contingent on leveraging the Bank of Mum and Dad, while lucrative professions and large firms have both been shown to tilt unfairly towards the privileged in graduate recruitment.85 Chapter Three culminates by calculating
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if they wished. In Chapter Five we explore this issue in depth, explaining the profound occupational advantages afforded to those who can draw on the Bank of Mum and Dad. Those with this kind of financial cushion, we show, are insulated from much of the uncertainty associated with forging an elite career, both in terms
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on an extensive programme of 175 interviews with people from different class backgrounds, across our four cases, to answer precisely these questions. 86 FIVE The Bank of Mum and Dad We interviewed Nathan at one of London’s most prestigious West End theatres. He was the lead in the venue’s big budget autumn play
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just for food.” Nathan tells us it was really these first few years that were most decisive for his future, when he worked 88 The Bank of Mum and Dad hardest and where his decisions to work with “the best up and coming directors” paid real dividends. But of course Nathan’s ability to work
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help from others. People’s accumulation of ‘human capital’, in other words, particularly in their early careers, is highly contingent on their access to the ‘Bank of Mum and Dad’. As we explore in this chapter, this kind of financial patronage is particularly important in uncertain and precarious elite labour markets. We therefore primarily focus
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a freedom of choice and allowing them to manoeuvre on to more promising career tracks, focus on developing valuable networks, resist exploitative employment 90 The Bank of Mum and Dad or take risky opportunities – all of which may propel them in the long term. We also argue that one reason these resources are so powerful
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struggles finding all kinds of work. He has a degree from Cambridge but, you know, he sells maps and chewing gum and washes 92 The Bank of Mum and Dad cars. He sometimes turns down jobs because it doesn’t make economic sense in terms of rent. If I go off and have a successful
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gaining a place at one of London’s most prestigious drama schools. After finishing drama school, she spent three years working full time 94 The Bank of Mum and Dad as an actor – auditioning for, and often being cast in, what she described as a “string of middle-class princess girl parts”. These were often
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she shared Molly’s exasperation at continually playing passive female characters, as a woman with a “strong Scottish accent”, the working-class characters 96 The Bank of Mum and Dad she had been offered were even more restricted. Indeed, she expressed a particular anger at the way female working-classness was either connected to crime
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her career. In recent years she explained that work had “dried up” and she was now working almost full time in a supermarket: 98 The Bank of Mum and Dad I do feel frustrated that my potential hasn’t been completely fulfilled. It is the lack of people seeing that ability in me, but also
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dream job. Others had started off on the creative route, often progressing well in the ‘indie’ sector, but had then taken sideways or 100 The Bank of Mum and Dad downward moves into more economically secure positions at 6TV. Hannah, for example, who was Black British and from a fairly poor, lower-middle-class family
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Notably, they were also much more likely than upwardly mobile interviewees to see their profession as ‘meritocratic’ and, unlike Dave, almost never questioned 102 The Bank of Mum and Dad the legitimacy of their own success. Moreover, when these interviewees did talk openly about privilege, they were awkward exchanges.20 They often looked visibly uncomfortable
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eye contact or stumbling over their words. The topic of parental money, in particular, was especially fraught. We noticed that even those who acknowledged the ‘Bank of Mum and Dad’ tended to do so in an abstract, generalised way, and almost never talked about specific figures. Peter, a Junior Commissioner at 6TV, was “fortunate” that
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an interrogative sociologist! This is because there is a fairly significant tension between benefiting from unearned wealth and adherence to dominant norms of meritocracy. The Bank of Mum and Dad arguably strikes right to the heart of the moral legitimacy of one’s success. Sociologist Rachel Sherman calls this ‘the anxieties of affluence’.23 Like
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Sherman, we read the privileged as often working hard to downplay or justify their privilege, especially when we asked direct questions about the Bank of Mum and Dad. This orientation played out in three ways. 103 The Class Ceiling First, we were intrigued by the way participants deployed particular stories about the source
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been given the deposit for a house or who still get their phone bill paid by their parents! So I’m there going 104 The Bank of Mum and Dad hold on ... I’m not ... this is all ... I’ve worked really fucking hard. Finally, some interviewees deflected conversations about money by emphasising the constraints
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). Yet either way, we would stress that this downplaying has important implications for the class pay gap. It means that the true value of the Bank of Mum and Dad goes largely unspoken in professional life, and its distorting influence on individual trajectories remains hidden from public view. Money matters less at Coopers and Turner
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Clarke We have seen various ways in which the Bank of Mum and Dad acts to shape the work trajectories of those in elite occupations from different class backgrounds. It is worth reiterating, however, that this varies very significantly
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noticed that two of our case studies – Turner Clarke (TC) and Coopers – have not featured so far in this chapter. This is not because the Bank of Mum and Dad is not important at all for understanding the professions of accountancy and architecture. Economic capital likely plays a pivotal role in understanding barriers to access
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associated with a lengthy seven-year architecture education, as well as additional costs of materials and field trips.26 Similarly, our interviews suggested that the Bank of Mum and Dad may play a significant role in the geographical sorting effect that we see in accountancy – both in the wider profession and at TC – whereby the
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– along with many other precarious elite occupations – is striking. In these arenas, where work is often freelance, short-term, poorly paid and extremely competitive, the Bank of Mum and Dad fundamentally mediates how people can respond to chronic early-career conditions of precarity, offering an invisible hand to some while leaving many others, often unwittingly
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professions such as accountancy and architecture, support is more likely to come from above rather than below. And instead of economic it is 106 The Bank of Mum and Dad social – in the form of informal sponsorship. As we explore in the next chapter, this form of sponsored mobility is often a prerequisite for those
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more powerful drivers are rooted in the misrecognition of classed self-presentation as ‘talent’, work cultures historically shaped by the privileged, the affordances of the ‘Bank of Mum and Dad’, and sponsored mobility premised on class-cultural homophily. But we also want to stake out what we think is important and innovative about our approach
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indicates, tends to come from two directions. First, in Chapter Five, we identified sources of support flowing from a person’s class background, namely, the ‘Bank of Mum and Dad’. This kind of financial patronage, we argue, is pivotal in propelling careers forward, particularly in precarious elite labour markets such as the cultural industries. Here
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sponsees through the organisational ranks. There are also wider issues around whether such support is acknowledged. We find, for example, that both sponsors and the Bank of Mum and Dad are perennially downplayed in people’s career narratives. Of course this strikes to the heart of the moral legitimacy of success; most want to believe
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diagrams that closed Chapters Three and Four. Now, however, we can add the drivers of the class pay gap identified in our case studies – the Bank of Mum and Dad, sponsorship, behavioural codes and self-elimination. While our analysis here is in no way definitive, and inevitably tilts towards the specific elite domains where we
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. Ban unpaid and unadvertised internships One of the clearest drivers of the class ceiling is the way in which those from privileged backgrounds use the ‘Bank of Mum and Dad’ to help them establish their career. Perhaps the most direct way this takes place is via unpaid, or very low-paid, internships – which can often
Tenants: The People on the Frontline of Britain's Housing Emergency
by Vicky Spratt · 18 May 2022 · 371pp · 122,273 words
night, it was freezing. Awake, Anthony wondered where home would be now? He grew up in a council house with his brothers; he had no Bank of Mum and Dad to bail him out. ‘If it was this easy for landlords to make people homeless, it should be easier to get help,’ he thought as
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’, Financial Times, 3 April 2020. 2 Life for Rent average house sale prices in Peckham increased: Melissa Lawford, ‘“Posh” Peckham’s house prices fuelled by bank of mum and dad’, Financial Times, 15 August 2018, www.ft.com/content/39b91420-9c84-11e8-88de-49c908b1f264 ‘from Mum and Dad’: Ibid. ‘year zero’: See Gavriel Hollander, ‘Thirty
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at www.ippr.org/research/publications/priced-out-england 6 The Rent Trap supports nearly one in four home purchases: Legal & General and Cebr, The Bank of Mum and Dad (2020). Available at www.legalandgeneral.com/landg-assets/personal/retirement/_resources/documents/bomad-2021.pdf their chances of owning a home in the UK: Jonathan
Uncomfortably Off: Why the Top 10% of Earners Should Care About Inequality
by Marcos González Hernando and Gerry Mitchell · 23 May 2023
most important mechanisms by which privilege is reproduced at the top is the fact children from privileged backgrounds can rely on what they call ‘the bank of mum and dad’.25 In other words, the children of affluent parents have the possibility of delaying their entry into the workforce even while living and studying in
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The average age for owning your first home is now 33 and a third of those first-time owners will have had help from ‘the bank of mum and dad’, partnering or government support.45 After more than a decade of low interest rates and rising house prices following the 2008 financial crisis, the 2020s
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, C. (1998) Work under capitalism. Oxford: Westview Press. Toft, M. and Friedman, S. (2021) Family wealth and the class ceiling: The propulsive power of the bank of mum and dad. Sociology, 55:1, 90–109. Törmälehto, V.-M. (2017) High income and affluence: Evidence from the European Union statistics on income and living conditions (EU
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–9, 105, 115–16, 169–70 automation 79, 158, 160 B Bangladeshi ethnicity, in the top 10% 30 Bank of England 78, 105, 164, 175 ‘bank of mum and dad’ 29, 111 Barber, Rob 1, 2, 4, 181 Barclay family 121 BBC 11 Beck, U. 64 Bell, Torsten 2, 6 Berman, Y. 34 Berry, C
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charitable sector 132 child poverty 170 see also poverty children of the top 10% 27, 35–6, 100–1, 109, 111–12, 183–4, 186 ‘bank of mum and dad’ 29, 111 childcare costs 135–6 downward social mobility 31–2, 162 social reproduction 135–7 US 57 Chinese ethnicity, in the top 10% 30
The Establishment: And How They Get Away With It
by Owen Jones · 3 Sep 2014 · 388pp · 125,472 words
aspiring journalists to work for free for long periods, often with little prospect of a paid job. Generally, only those able to live off the Bank of Mum and Dad can afford such exploitation, particularly in London, one of the world’s most expensive cities. Another barrier is the rise of costly postgraduate qualifications, which
Posh Boys: How English Public Schools Ruin Britain
by Robert Verkaik · 14 Apr 2018 · 419pp · 119,476 words
gulf between the unconnected working class and the wealthy elite. Talented working-class aspiring journalists are discriminated against because they can’t live off the Bank of Mum and Dad. With few exceptions, only the well-to-do can afford to do the unpaid internships and expensive journalism masters’ degrees that increasingly must adorn the
The Great Demographic Reversal: Ageing Societies, Waning Inequality, and an Inflation Revival
by Charles Goodhart and Manoj Pradhan · 8 Aug 2020 · 438pp · 84,256 words
chunk (reducing that period from, say, 45–65 to 52–67). And the rising cost of housing and of university education puts pressure on the bank of Mum and Dad. If that bank is providing more finance to their children, there can be less set aside for future retirement. Some assume that forward-looking households
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(on the number of households) by more young living with their parents, owing to the high cost of separate accommodation. Even here, calls on the bank of Mum and Dad will reduce savings for retirement, as in Chapters 5 and 6. For all these reasons, we believe that mainstream theorists have been too sanguine about
The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest
by Edward Chancellor · 15 Aug 2022 · 829pp · 187,394 words
Despite low mortgage costs, most first-time buyers couldn’t scrape together a deposit. Many were assisted by a new financial institution, known as the ‘Bank of Mum and Dad’. Homeownership was fast becoming a preserve of the professional classes.100 The British government offered a subsidy to first-time buyers in 2013, but this
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, 293†, 296, 297; the old as largest voting cohort, 211–12; rise of populism, xxii, 299; weakening support for, 299 demographics: ageing societies, 29, 127; ‘Bank of Mum and Dad’, 212; generational impact of 2008 crisis, 211–12, 213; Alvin Hansen on, 126; and interest, xxiv, 10, 12, 126–7, 131, 133; largest voting cohort
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, 94, 98, 108, 261 private equity firms, xxii, 162–3, 166, 204, 207, 223 ‘promoter’s profit’ concept, 158–9, 160, 161, 164 property markets: ‘Bank of Mum and Dad’, 212; booms in Spain and Ireland, 253; bubble in US before 2008 crisis, 112, 114, 115, 115†, 116, 117, 148, 191, 205; bubbles as red
The End of Alchemy: Money, Banking and the Future of the Global Economy
by Mervyn King · 3 Mar 2016 · 464pp · 139,088 words
of last resort’ and ‘bailout’ have become synonymous. It is only a matter of time before there is a demand for a LOLR for the Bank of Mum and Dad. Bagehot’s argument was very different. In essence, the problem was that the banking system was an intermediary financing illiquid assets by promising instant liquidity