Publication: The Straits Times, p D2&D4 Date: 16 July 2011 Headline: A fair starting line? I? SMU In studies of sodal mobility. a tranr[Han matrix can be used to measure the ehaees of someone moving up or down fmm hi mi-gnp.-i University of Sinsapore social wo* assistant pmfessw Irene Ng developed the lnost merit available one, based on results of aH102youthsuwey.there~ults arRpresentedbelow.Ywthpre Bvided into fou proups: hwn FAIR youths' chams of moving up an incomegroup ("Up lste~'?, down an income goyr ("Down 1 step") or staying put (Ttay put") in their paents' income gmlps are listed in the chat below. STARTING (Youth whcse parents an in b 25 per cent of income pmup) NE? Rapid development may have propelled widespread growth of incomes and educational and occupational attainment in the past, but Singapore may have come to a stage where it needs to contend with the question of relative mobility. Studies have s h o w that 58 per cent of the economic advantage that high-income parents have is being passed on to their children. Is Singapore doing enough to mitigate the disadvantage of being born into a poorer, less-educated family? Kuan asked how many parents of pupils in the top 5 per cent of each PSLE cohort send their children for tuition and other supplementary classes. They said the answers are needed to give a complete picture of the opportuni- tv structures here. Yet they have not been revealed. how hard you will striven to improve your circumstances. But improving relative mobility also has a less-talked-about downside: It re- duces the chances that well-off parents can transfer their social and economic edge to their children. The exercise - whether in the form of Upperm- UP 1 SkP -- 22% stay* i- mrc Down lstep 26% Down2 steps 22% DRIVER Mohamed Ionid. SO, dropped out at Secondary 2. He raised four children on his $2.000 monthly salary. Three of them - a daughter and two sons - who com~leted their studies at pol- But just what does social mobility mean? SOCIAL mobility reflects how easy it is for people to break out of their parents' socioeconomic status or improve their own lot. This can be done through chang- es in occupation, education or income. But to get the true picture. ~ociologists and economistssay the key distinction be- tween absolute and relative mobility needs to be made. Absolute mobiity occurs when individ- uals get a higher income or education than before, or compared with their par- ents. It can exist in s society that is at the same t i i e highly stratified, so those in the lowest income bracket can be trapped on its lowest rung despite earning higher salaries over t i i e . progressive income taxes, estate duties or needs-based scholarships - casts the spotlight on class tensions as each group jostles to get ahead or maintain its lead in the social hierarchy. Such pressure was less evident in Sin- ytechnic and 1nGituteof Technical ~ & c a - tion level have found iobs as a nurse, tech- gapore'searly years when rapid develop- ment helped lift overall incomes and edu- nician and boutique salesman respective- cational and occupational attainment. But as the heated debate during the re- ly. But his hopes are most invested in 13-year-old HeSfy, now in Sec I, who he thinks has the smarts to go the Mhest. "He has more ideas than other children his age," says the proud father, who wants his youngest son to land a job that pays twice, if not more, than what he cur- rently makes. "If he can study at a higher level, I want him to study at the higher level. If I have no money, I will borrow from people so that he can study." he says. It's the quintessential Singapore Dream: getting your children to exceed your lot in We. Yet this dream of social mobility also fils parents with anxiety in today's fast-paced environment, where the costs and achievement benchmarks are constantly being raised. The country demands better credentials from its work- force aU the time, says Mr Mohamed. "We cannot lag behind." In lanuary. this anxiety bubbled over when then Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew noted that at least 20 per cent of fa- thers of students in elite schools like Raf- fles Institution and Anglo-Chinese School (Independent) were university graduates, while the equivalent figure was around 10 per cent for neighbour- hood schools like lurong West Secondary and Bukit Merah Secondary. The stark picture of stratification caused an outcry, fuelling resentment among parents disenchanted by what they felt was an elitist school system. Then Education Minister Ng Eng Hen revealed more statistics in March show- ing that about half the students in the bot- tom third of the socioeconomic bracket score in the top two-thirds of their co- hort during the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE). While that assuaged some concerns, it also raised other questions from the pub- lic and academics. Singapore Management University (SMU) sociologist Chung Wai. Keung wanted to know how students from high- er income brackets f ad. Straits Times reader Cheong Tuck cent general election showed, itcould be gnWng prominence now. Economist Ho Kong Weng from the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) says: "If Singapore is maturing to a steady state, like an advanced country, its economic growth rate will diminish. The distributional problem will be more obvious, and inequality and mobility will become more important." Singapore's score card EARLY published attempts to study so- cial mobility, beginning in 1991, tended Up 2 steps 28% UP 1 *P 23% Downlstep 27% Relative mobility refers to the ease of moving UD and down the social ladder. This &I be harder to assess as bench- marks of socioeconomic standing change over time. Children of parents with Primary 6 qualifications, for example. may not achieve relative mobility despite acquir- ing polytechnic diplomas if the education- al benchmarks have been raised for their generation. Developing countries tend to focus more on improving absolute mobility to meet basic needs like food, housing and health care. la advanced economies with slower rates of growth and h i i e r standards of living, intergenerationalrelative mobility comes to the fore. This is because it is closely associated with how fair a society is and how good it is at mitigating the disadvantage that low-income families pass on to their next generation in the form of poorer nutri- tion, inferior education and reduced job prospeds:. The Br~tuih government, for example, to focus on the riie in occupational status and educational attainment of Singapore- -. MS. In recent times, researchers have at- tempted to measure social mobility by cal- culating the extent to which parents are able to-pass on their economic or educa- tional advantage to their children. Income mobility. for example, is mea- sured bv calculatinn the extent to which parents'income has-a bearing on the eam- inns of their children. This "elasticitv" is Bottom (Youth whose parents are in bottom 25 per cent of income group) expressed as a figure between 0 id 1, with a score of 0 implying that patents' incomes absolutely do not determine what their children earn. While direct international compari- sons are hard to make because of varying survey samples and methods, studies by Dr Ng from the NUS have shed some light. Using data on fully employed youth aged 23 to 29 and adjustfng the calcula- tion to make it comparable with that of older adults, Dr Ng found in 2007 that Singapore had an intergenerational in- come elasticity of 0.58. This means that 58 per cent of the income advantage of parents was being passed onto their chil- dren. Thii put it roughly on a par with the United States', which various studies have found to be in the region of 0.5, but UPS* - . - Up 2 steps -- Un 1 sten said in an ~ ~ril strategy paper on social mobility that "an unfair society is one in which the circumstances of a person's birth determine the life he goes on to lead". It added: *For any given level of skill and ambition, regardless of an individu- al's background. everyone should have an equal chance of getting the job he wants or reaching a higher income bracket." Closer to home, National University of Sigapore (NUS) social work academic Irene Ng says "it affects your aspiration. Source: The Straits Times O Singapore Press Holdings Limited. Permission required for reproduction.