Duncan Exley: The End of Aspiration?

My guest in this programme is Duncan Exley, who in his recent book, The End of Aspiration, warns:

Living standards over the coming years are predicted to stagnate for middle-income households and to fall for those with low incomes, and in occupational terms, people born in the early 1980s are the first group since comparable records began in 1946 to be in lower-status jobs than their parents were at the same age.

Our children are now more likely to slide down the scale than to climb up.

Duncan is a former director of the Equality Trust, a charity that seeks to address the economic inequalities in the UK. In his book, he examines not only the data that suggests the UK is becoming markedly less meritocratic, but also speaks to people whose own stories buck the trend: people from non-privileged backgrounds who went on to have successful careers in professions such as the law, medicine, politics and the media, which are generally regarded as difficult to access. What can we learn from their stories?

Duncan’s own story is that he came from a small mining town in West Yorkshire, was the first in his family to attend university, and went on to have the sort of professional job in London that meant some regarded him as having joined the elite. That, as you’ll hear, has given him a sharp awareness of all the factors that can get in the way of bettering your circumstances, barriers that those born to privilege do not even realise exist. At the same time there are what Duncan calls ‘glass ladders’ – opportunities that are there for the taking, but you have to know they are there in the first place. And that usually means knowing people who can point them out to you.

We also talk about tuition fees, inheritance tax, zero-hours contracts and Brexit’s likely impact. But when I met Duncan in a bookshop café a few weeks ago – just before another old Etonian came to power – I began by asking him about the kinds of people he had wanted to interview and what he hoped their stories would reveal.

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