Wayne Rooney, a 25-year-old born to working-class parents in Croxteth, Liverpool, recently signed a new 5-year contract with Manchester United Football Club reputed to be worth £42 million, or £160,000 per week. He is not alone in this ‘rags to riches’ story — many other young footballers and pop stars from similar backgrounds earn the sort of money that most people can only dream of.
So, does this mean that Britain is now a society in which people with talent who work hard are able to rise to the higher levels of society? Sociologists refer to a society in which rewards are distributed according to a person’s ability and effort as meritocratic. In a truly meritocratic society, there would be considerable movement between social classes, both upwards and downwards. Such movement is known as social mobility, and the type of social mobility that is most studied is that in which individuals (traditionally sons) are compared with their father in terms of social class position, usually measured by occupation. This is known as inter-generational social mobility.
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