Health promotion celebrates the possibility
of change; it sees change as a force for good. People can change their lifestyle, their mindset, can get out of a health-harming situation – given the right kinds
of social support. And societies can change – clearly history tells us
this. Thus the importance of people
being able to change their social status is central to health promotion, given
how much health inequalities are related to it. So the recently published
report on social mobility in Britain makes depressing reading for anyone in
health promotion.
Alan Milburn is the government’s
Independent Reviewer on Social Mobility and Child Poverty, and in the report on
social mobility and the professions, he suggests that social mobility has
stagnated: http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/sites/default/files/resources/IR_FairAccess_acc2.pdf
It appears that people in their 40s today
are less socially mobile than people born in the 1950s (which includes
me). I benefitted from the greater
access to education, including University, but that possibility has now ground
to a halt, meaning that the biggest predictor of how well a child will do in
life is the socioeconomic circumstances he or she is born into. The idea that
birth determines life chances is of course, what a monarchy rests on. Having
life chances determined by birth is seen as antithetical in a democracy, which
is why the UK government has set out 17 indicators for social mobility or ‘life
chances’ through childhood. Some of these indicators aim to decrease the huge
gap in educational resources and attainment, with a stress on the early years,
or pre-school interventions. Some of this may mean that the previous government’s
measures will be continued, such as the Sure Start initiatives, many of which
our Centre for Health Promotion Research evaluated. Now Children’s Centres, it
will be interesting to see if they survive the ‘austerity cuts’ of the present
regime.
Milburn’s report highlights how educational
attainment is so important to gaining professional employment – although only
7% of the population is privately educated, 70% of high court judges and 54% of
FTSE 100 chief executives and top journalists, and 22% of medical and dental
school students went to fee-paying schools. Our government and civil service are
disproportionally run by the privately educated and privileged. In 2010, the
Higher Education Funding Council for England reported some substantial
increases in the number of youngsters from the poorest areas going into higher
education from 2005 onwards, fueled by Labour’s investment. This appears to
have ended with the switch to the coalition government; the class divide at the
heart of our country, fueled by private education, has always been replicated
in the tertiary sector, but this source of social mobility seems to have been
shut off.
Birth as destiny is all around us this
‘jubilee’ week; that it is 'natural' to be born into one’s station in life appears to be a part of
the British psyche. The royal family appears more popular than ever. Polls tell
us that only 22% of the population wants the monarchy to be replaced by
something more democratic. The monarchy, defending as it does class divisions,
hierarchy, unearned wealth, militarism, and inherited privilege remains
powerfully at the centre of ‘British’ life. To be born into fantastic privilege
– and stay there - legitimates the fact that people can be born into
deprivation – and stay there. It legitimates the 'naturalness' of social immobility.
The ‘jubilee’ is heralded as a unifying
pageant across all sectors of society; this version of ‘jubilee’, as a sharing of a popular culture, is far
from the original meaning as set out in Judeo-Christian traditions, where it
was meant as the cancellation of debts, freeing of slaves, sharing out of land,
and equalization of resources. Biblically, it asked people to challenge the
rights of the wealthy, to side with the poor and disadvantaged. This is the
meaning adopted by the Jubilee Debt Campaign, which is still attempting to
reduce the debts of the poorest countries whilst also highlighting the workings
of the global finance system, tax evasions and lack of accountability of
corporate capital. It has recently called for a new justice jubilee:
The campaign asks us to remember the
original meaning of jubilee, as, essentially, a call for economic and social justice.
Health justice, the key value at the heart of health promotion, is contingent on these other
forms of justice.
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