Social mobility has languished for some time across much of the developed world in recent years. Research from the University of Warwick argues that disabled people have a particularly raw deal.

The research shows that disabled people not only lag behind their able-bodied peers in raw employment terms, but when they do have jobs, they are likely to have worse pay and conditions than their parents, indicating downward social mobility.

Disability and social mobility

The researchers analyzed data from a longitudinal study looking at around 16,000 students in England who were born between 1989 and 1990. They tracked the social mobility patterns of students according to their disability status as well as via the social class of their parents at 14 and then their own social class at 25.

The analysis found that young people were considerably more likely to be unemployed at 25, with 35% of those sampled without a job. This compares to just 18% of non-disabled people. What’s more, they were also less likely to experience upward social mobility, and indeed, were more likely to suffer from downward mobility.

If that isn’t bad enough, the researchers also found that disabled young people also did much worse in the labor market, especially if they were from a low social class background. Of the young disabled people who were out of work at 25, a large proportion was from a low social class background.

Social disadvantage

This prompted the researchers to conduct a second, qualitative study to understand why this is. It showed that class-based discrimination was a major factor for disabled young people, especially in mainstream school settings. Many young people reported finding it hard to receive the right support at school.

Sadly, it was mainly those from socially disadvantaged backgrounds that experienced the greatest barriers to learning over time, which had an obvious impact on their educational progress. Those from better-off backgrounds could rely on more resources and strategies from their parents to help them overcome ableist barriers in the education system.

The authors believe that these class differences at school then feed into the poorer outcomes in the labor market. Social mobility inequalities may also be related to discrimination in hiring practices, lack of reasonable adjustments in the workplace, and limitations that are specific to the young person’s disability.