There is no more equality of opportunity in Ireland today compared with 30 years ago despite huge economic growth, according to the ESRI. Carol Coulter reports.
The expansion of education that has taken place in these years has not had an appreciable impact on equality of opportunity, according to the ESRI study.However, it found that there was an absolute growth in higher-status jobs over that period.
In an article in the ESRI's Quarterly Economic Commentary, Prof Christopher T. Whelan and Dr Richard Layte examined the pace of social mobility in Ireland between 1973 and 2000. They found that Ireland was a society with less equality of opportunity than most European countries in 1973, and this changed little despite the economic growth.
The children of those in professional and managerial positions are four times as likely to access such positions themselves as the children of non-skilled manual workers. However, they found that the absolute number of jobs in the professional and managerial area had almost doubled. This meant that more people from lower socio-economic classes had access to them, without displacing the children of those already there.
The growth in the economy led to a change in class and employment structures in Ireland. There was a fall in the number of farmers and semi- and unskilled workers.
There was an increase in professional and managerial positions, and also in non-manual and skilled manual workers, technicians and supervisors. Two out of three positions were white-collar or skilled occupations in 2000, compared with one in three in 1973.
Thus there was a move by the children of farmers and unskilled and semi-skilled workers into professional, managerial and white-collar jobs.
Nonetheless, the chances of moving into the more desirable and better-off positions were far higher for the offspring of those already in such positions.
Although a man from a non-skilled manual background was twice as likely to reach a professional or managerial position in 2000 as in 1973, one born into that class was four times more likely to reach such a level.
The expansion of the education system has not radically altered this pattern. It has affected all the social classes, so that the proportion of those in professional and managerial positions without third-level qualifications has fallen dramatically.
The proportion of people from unskilled manual backgrounds gaining such qualifications grew from 2 per cent in 1973 to 10 per cent in 2000.
However, the proportion from the professional and managerial classes with third-level qualifications grew from only 4 per cent in 1973 to 51 per cent in 2000.
"With an increased availability of higher qualifications goes a reduced capacity of such qualifications to guarantee access to more favoured class positions," the authors state, adding that those possessing such qualifications no longer constitute "a small elite".
Nonetheless, the general expansion of education has facilitated the change in the Irish class structure, with its preponderance of white-collar workers.
In conclusion, they point out that the economic boom did result in "a significant upgrading of the class structure" with an absolute increase in the number of higher-level occupations.
But 94 per cent of the changes in social class experienced by individuals were explained by the change in the overall class structure, rather than in greater equality of opportunity.