SKILLS INEQUALITY, ADULT LEARNING AND SOCIAL COHESION IN THE UNITED KINGDOM
by Jan Germen Janmaat, Institute of Education and Andy Green, Institute of Education 1
ABSTRACT: In this article we argue that the legitimacy and stability of the social and political order in Britain is undermined by persistent inequalities of skills and opportunities. We first contend that British society is characterised by a liberal regime of social cohesion. Crucial to such a regime is the belief in individual opportunity and rewards based on merit. We demonstrate, through comparative analysis, that skills inequality is actually higher and social mobility lower in Britain than in other western countries. Also the perception of equal opportunities is lower. In Britain there is thus a mismatch between the cherished ideal of meritocracy and the reality of a stratified society, both objectively and perceived. This, we postulate, is likely to contribute to the political alienation of disadvantaged groups. We argue that in theory adult learning could reduce the skills gap but that in reality it only magnifies skills inequality since in Britain the well educated and people in work have higher participation rates than the poorly educated and unemployed.
1. Introduction
The United Kingdom compares unfavourably to many other western countries on measures of social cohesion. Violent crime rates are higher and levels of social and political trust are lower than in many other western states. The county moreover has experienced a precipitous, long-term decline in social trust while Germany and the Scandinavian countries have witnessed a steady rise in this important indicator of social cohesion (Green and Janmaat 2011).
Many scholars blame Britain’s relative lack of cohesion on its high and rising levels of household income inequality (Dorling, 2010; Green and Janmaat, 2011; Wilkinson and Pickett, 2009). Inequality, it is argued, can directly undermine social cohesion through increasing social conflict. It can also have indirect effects through the erosion of social and political trust that may result from the atrophy of shared beliefs in individual opportunities and meritocratic rewards and the growing social and cultural distance between groups within society (Delhey and Newton, 2005). Inequality can also affect individuals adversely through stress. As Wilkinson (1996) argues, inequality increases high-stakes competition in society which is likely, in turn, to lead to greater status anxiety and stress. Stress has been shown to underlie many manifestations of poor physical and mental health and may also undermine trust (Green et al., 2011).
Although, traditionally, most of the literature on the social effects of inequality focuses on income inequality, disparities of skills and opportunities have also attracted attention recently. This makes good sense since education has become a key dividing line in western societies, sometimes pushing cleavages of religion and class to the background (Bovens and Wille, 2009). Inequalities of skills and opportunities can also be expected to influence social cohesion via different paths – both indirectly, through its effects on income inequality and social mobility (Nickell and Layard, 1998; Green et al., 2006) and directly, by increasing the cultural distance between groups (in the same manner that income inequality does).
The UK also performs poorly on all these indicators of inequality by comparison to other western states: it has above average levels of inequality of income and skills (Green et al, 2011) and below average levels of intergenerational social mobility (Blandon et al., 2005) and equality of opportunity (as indicated by the effect of social origin on educational achievement) (Green et al., 2006; OECD, 2010).
In this paper we argue that inequality in skills and opportunities poses a particularly serious threat to the cohesion of contemporary British society since the legitimacy of its social order, in our view, is premised on core beliefs in individual opportunities and rewards based on merit. If British society is no longer perceived to be fair due to increasing inequality of opportunity, the social glue which holds it together is likely to dissolve. This is a distinctive argument in two respects: firstly, because it claims that social cohesion in Britain takes a particular form and that western societies differ qualitatively in what holds them together; secondly, because it proposes a distinct connection between inequality of skills and opportunities, on the one hand, and the particular regime of social cohesion found in Britain, on the other. We will further argue that adult learning has the potential of equalizing skills and enhancing social mobility, but that in practice it currently only magnifies skills disparities. Unless this situation changes and adult education genuinely offers poorly educated people the chance to narrow the skills gap with their more privileged peers, disadvantaged groups are likely increasingly to turn their backs on the liberal-democratic order of British society.
We begin by discussing the phenomenon of social cohesion and the particular form it takes in Britain. Subsequently, the paper will focus on the link between skills inequality and the liberal regime of social cohesion found in Britain. In the last section we discuss adult learning as a potential remedy to increasing skills inequality and social disintegration.
2. Social Cohesion
We all have ideas on what an ideal society should look like. It is therefore not surprising that normative approaches rooted in political philosophy have tended to predominate in the study of social cohesion. Prime recent examples would include the definitions of the phenomenon provided by Maxwell (1996), Jenson (1998), Chan et al. (2006), the Council of Europe (2005) and Kearns and Forrest (2000). Although these definitions differ in the components of social cohesion that they highlight, they crucially share the propensity of understanding social cohesion as a state of affairs representing a collection of socially desirable conditions. Thus conditions that are often mentioned include equality, equal opportunity, civic and political engagement, trust, shared values, a feeling of belonging, common objectives, safety (absence of crime), and peace. The limitation of this approach is that it assumes that all societies hang together – or fail to hang together - in the same ways.
In our recent book (Green and Janmaat, 2011) we adopted a different research strategy which attempts to avoid the drawbacks of both purely normative/theoretical and exclusively empiricist approaches. We first traced the different traditions of thought on social cohesion in western political philosophy and sociology. Subsequently, we investigated to what extent the actual contemporary social cohesion profiles of western societies correspond to ideal-typical representations of social cohesion proposed by different political philosophies. The research thus sought to combine a rigorous empirical scrutiny of the social characteristics relating to social cohesion in different countries and to link these research findings to the wider political thought and debate on social cohesion. Our conclusion was that social cohesion does indeed come in different guises in different western societies.
2.1. Three Regimes of Social Cohesion
To analyse the different contemporary ‘regimes’ of social cohesion we started from a definition of the phenomenon which was considered broad enough to include a wide range of possible ‘types’ of social cohesion. Thus, social cohesion, was defined as:
The property by which whole societies, and the individuals within them, are bound together through the action of specific attitudes, behaviours, rules and institutions which rely on consensus rather than pure coercion (Green and Janmaat, 2011, p. 18).
The definition assumes that social cohesion refers primarily to social bonding at the level of whole societies (ie states rather than the smaller, bounded communities that are typically the object of the social capital research in the tradition of James Coleman (1988). It also avoids asserting that social cohesion is always or necessarily a good thing, or that only a preferred form of social bonding can be considered as constituting social cohesion. It is only normative in as much as it differentiates social cohesion from social order achieved through pure coercion.
The analysis subsequently traced the development of the different traditions of thought on social cohesion to be found in different regions of the West and their social and economic origins.2 Broadly speaking, these traditions, identified as liberalism, republicanism and cultural conservatism, propose different roles for the state to ensure peace and stability. While liberalism advocates minimal state interference and maximum freedom for the market and for individuals to organize themselves in all kinds of civic associations, republicanism accords a prime role for the state as a guardian of cohesion. In republican thought the state represents a political community of citizens and has the capacity and duty to promote the values of this community and ensure the equal participation of its citizens. Cultural conservatism differs from both liberalism and republicanism by emphasizing that cohesion is rooted in ethno-cultural homogeneity and a stable social hierarchy. The state should ensure that the nation remains ‘pure’ and that the existing social stratification, not only in social terms but also along the lines of gender, ethnic and age, is preserved.
It is argued that, historically, liberalism shaped the social order in English-speaking countries, republicanism that of France and Southern Europe and, to a lesser extent, the Scandinavian countries, and that the social glue of the German-speaking and Benelux countries was infused with cultural conservatism. In the post Second World War period, these traditions were transformed so that whereas liberalism still predominated in the English-speaking countries, a distinctive social democratic tradition became embedded in the Nordic countries, while in the rest of western continental Europe the European Union helped to foster a distinctive ‘social market tradition’ which tended to subsume cultural conservatism within a revamped form of republicanism.
The statistical analysis of key institutional and attitudinal indicators for OECD countries does tend to confirm the existence of three distinctive regimes of social cohesion in the West, which correspond broadly to the three traditions as they emerged in the post-war era. A ‘liberal regime’ can be identified in the English-speaking countries; a ‘social-democratic regime’ (which partly draws on republican thought) predominates in the Nordic countries, and a social market regime (partly shaped by conservative and partly by republican thinking) characterizing the societies in the rest of north-west continental Europe. These regimes correspond closely to the welfare regimes observed by Esping-Andersen (1990) and show a considerable overlap with the varieties of capitalism (shareholder versus stakeholder; liberal market economies versus coordinated market economies) identified by Hutton (2002) and Hall and Soskice (2001). This indicates that differences between western societies in socio-institutional characteristics are fundamental and apply across many domains of society.
In liberal societies social cohesion relies on the triple foundations of market freedoms, active civil society and core beliefs in individual opportunities and rewards based on merit. Neither a wider set of shared values nor an active role of the state have been regarded as essential for a cohesive society. In social democratic societies, by contrast, social cohesion is characterized by a strong institutional embedding. Social solidarity is founded on egalitarian and solidaristic values promoted by the state. The latter also promotes the very high levels of social and political trust which cannot be solely attributed to greater ethnic homogeneity since some Nordic societies, like Sweden, are both ethnically diverse and highly trusting. The social market societies also rely on institutions to shore up social cohesion but here the emphasis is not so much on egalitarianism but on a broader set of shared values and a strong national identity. These societies are further characterised by high levels of corporatism, relatively low levels of civic participation, and high levels of welfare and social protection. Income inequality also tends to be lower than in liberal societies.
2.2. Threats to Social Cohesion in Britain
Britain can be firmly identified as having a ‘liberal’ regime of social cohesion. It has relatively low levels of state intervention and high levels of active civic participation. Other characteristics that make the country ‘fit’ the liberal regime are its comparatively low level of employment protection and high percentage of people preferring freedom over equality (Green and Janmaat, 2011, pp. 104-113). Our recent analysis of 2009 International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) data further reveals that meritocratic convictions in Britain are strong by comparison to those in other countries. Asked about principles governing rewards, the British assigned much more importance to hard work (i.e. merit) as a factor that should determine a person’s income rather than whether a person has children to provide for (i.e. need). In fact, the British were among the nations that showed the largest gap between these two principles (see Table 1). The other English-speaking states also considered merit much more important than need, indicating that they form a coherent group on this issue. In most of the continental European countries, by contrast, the difference in importance attached to the two principles was much smaller. The exception are the Scandinavian countries as they too value merit much more than need. Further evidence of the liberal character of British public opinion is offered by survey data on income inequality. European Social Survey (ESS) 2008 data show that the British are relatively tolerant of large income differences as long as they are based on differences in talent and effort (see Table 1).
TABLE 1. Beliefs about distributive principles and fair inequalities
Country / Hard work / children to provide for *(ISSP 2009) / Country / Large differences in income are acceptable to reward talents and effort
(% agree + strongly agree) (ESS 2008)
Australia / 56.4 / Greece / 74.7
New Zealand / 54.7 / Denmark / 66.7
Norway / 51.6 / Great Britain / 63.9
Sweden / 47.4 / Germany / 60.1
Great Britain / 47.0 / Netherlands / 57.7
Finland / 44.2 / Switzerland / 56.4
USA / 44.2 / Belgium / 55.8
Japan / 39.8 / Cyprus / 55.2
Iceland / 39.2 / Israel / 54.5
Portugal / 35.4 / Spain / 52.9
South Korea / 30.3 / Norway / 52.6
Slovenia / 28.7 / France / 51.5
Denmark / 28.2 / Sweden / 49.0
Austria / 22.9 / Portugal / 48.9
Switzerland / 21.9 / Slovenia / 36.6
France / 19.9 / Finland / 27.5
Belgium / 19.4
Spain / 16.2
Germany / 10.8
Israel / 5.7
* Based on the answers to the question “How important is the following for a person’s pay? (a) how hard he or she works at the job; (b) whether the person has children to support”. Answer categories: (1) essential; (2) very important; (3) fairly important; (4) not very important; (5) not important at all. The data represent the percentages “essential” plus “very important” on the first item minus the percentages “essential” plus “very important” on the second.