Policy paper

State of the Nation 2024: Local to national, mapping opportunities for all

The Social Mobility Commission's annual report on the state of social mobility in the UK.

• From: Social Mobility Commission
• Published: 11 September 2024

Documents

State of the Nation 2024: Local to National, Mapping Opportunities for All

Ref: ISBN 978-1-5286-5139-4, E03184170

PDF, 52.1 MB, 124 pages

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Foreword and executive summary

Ref: ISBN 978-1-5286-5139-4, E03184170

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Chapter 1: Introduction

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Chapter 2: Mobility since last year

Ref: ISBN 978-1-5286-5139-4, E03184170

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Chapter 3: Mobility across the UK

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Next steps

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Technical annex

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Details

Presented to Parliament pursuant to section 8B(6) of the Life Chances Act 2010

The Social Mobility Commission (SMC) reports on social mobility across the UK, in its annual report, State of the Nation 2024: Local to National, Mapping Opportunities for All.

The report builds further on the new Social Mobility Index by breaking the UK down to local authority level, so we can see where social mobility is working best and worst and prospects are highest and lowest.

It also provides breakdowns by protected characteristics such as sex, ethnicity and disability. These breakdowns are featured mainly on our accompanying online tool.

Main points

Our long-term vision is to report a consistent set of social mobility statistics over time – our Social Mobility Index. In line with this, we have created a new website to host it, and we have also updated most of the statistics reported there since last year’s report. 

Our new approach has allowed us to split the UK into 203 local-authority areas, instead of the 41 regions we had last year.

We now have one composite index of social mobility for young people aged 25 to 44, and 3 indices covering the drivers (enablers) of social mobility.

Our composite index for the intermediate outcomes of young people is referred to as the ‘Index of Promising Prospects’.

The indices for the drivers are ‘Conditions of Childhood’, ‘Labour Market Opportunities for Young People’, and ‘Innovation and Growth’.

Published 11 September 2024