Swiss continue to enjoy high social mobility, study shows

Opportunities for social mobility remain high in Switzerland Keystone-SDA

Opportunities for upward social mobility have remained intact in Switzerland since the 1980s. Social mobility is exceptionally high by international comparison, a study shows.

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For the first time, researchers at the Institute for Swiss Economic Policy (IWP) at the University of Lucerne have analysed the development of opportunities for social advancement in Switzerland using current data. Their work, the results of which were published on Monday, uses the “American dream” as a reference.

In the United States in the 1980s, there was a sharp increase in the concentration of income, while at the same time social mobility fell sharply. The researchers wanted to find out what the situation was like in Switzerland, where income inequality has remained virtually unchanged since the 1980s.

Siblings’ incomes

To understand whether this stability is also reflected in social mobility, the study analysed the incomes of siblings over a period of forty years, with the aim of measuring the influence of the family on future incomes. Siblings generally share the same parental home, but also the same social environment and operate within similar networks.

The similarity of siblings’ incomes is therefore taken as a reliable indicator of the influence of the parental home. The more similar the siblings’ incomes, the stronger the influence of the family environment – and the lower the social mobility.

On average, only 17% of income is attributable to the family environment – a figure that has never exceeded 21% over the last forty years, the study concludes. At the same time, the concentration of income among the richest 10% remains stable at around 30%.

Switzerland has exceptionally high levels of social mobility by international standards – even higher than the Scandinavian countries, IWP concludes. This suggests a close link between income distribution and equality of opportunity.

Translated from German by DeepL/sb

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