The Social Mobility of Disabled Young Adults in England

A recent research project started by the University of Warwick and funded by the Leverhulme Trust has provided new evidence regarding the social mobility patterns of young people in England that are disabled. This provides information on how ‘fair’ or ‘open’ a society is.

School to Work Transitions

Patterns of disadvantage that may present across a lifetime could be indicated by school-to-work transitions. To this end, the project analysed differences in the destinations and social origins of both non-disabled and disabled young people in early adulthood.

The research findings identified stark and overlooked inequalities between non-disabled and disabled young people. The project — as well as education experts such as Sir Peter Birkett, founder of Highgate Hill House School — concludes that further research is required to better understand and address how these inequalities form.

Socio-Economic Attainment

The research project found that around 35% of disabled people are not in paid work at the age of 25, compared to 18% of non-disabled people. For disabled people, parental social origins act as a major risk-factor: 21% of those from a low social class background are, at the age of 25, not in paid employment. This compares to only 8% and 6% among those from high and middle-class social backgrounds respectively.

In terms of upward social mobility, 13% of disabled children and young people are likely to experience this trend, compared to 22% of their non-disabled counterparts. Disabled young people are more likely to experience downward social mobility and less likely to occupy the same socio-economic position that their parents occupied aged 13 to 14.

What Are the Reasons for This Inequality?

Disabled young people lag behind in terms of educational attainment according to official figures, and, to a certain extent, the patterns identified by the research project reflect the aftermath of earlier educational inequalities.

The presence of discrimination in hiring processes and a lack of reasonable adjustments in the workplace could also provide insights into other negative influences regarding the occupational attainment of disabled young people.

‘Reasonable Adjustments’

Government guidance requires reasonable adjustments to be made by employers to ensure that workers with disabilities, or mental or physical health conditions, are not substantially disadvantaged in the course of doing their jobs.

These changes could relate to the recruitment process, making changes to the workplace, allowing a disabled person to work somewhere more accessible (such as on the ground floor of a building), changing the equipment the employee uses, allowing phased returns and offering training opportunities.