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Reflections on the meritocracy debate in Britain: a response to Richard Breen and John Goldthorpe 1

Reflections on the meritocracy debate in Britain: a response to Richard Breen and John Goldthorpe 1 ABSTRACT A paper by Breen and Goldthorpe recently claimed to have exposed ‘fatal flaws’ in my work on meritocracy in Britain. This paper responds to their criticisms. The results of their re‐analysis of the NCDS data set are shown to be consistent with my earlier findings and arguments. Furthermore, re‐running some of my earlier models using measures that they favour and a method designed to privilege their position, the results once again demonstrate that, while class origins have some effect on class destinations (in particular, for those born into the middle class), ability and effort exert a much greater effect. Based on these results, the paper identifies three core propositions about meritocracy in Britain on which all parties to this debate should now be able to agree. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The British Journal of Sociology Wiley

Reflections on the meritocracy debate in Britain: a response to Richard Breen and John Goldthorpe 1

Saunders, Peter
The British Journal of Sociology , Volume 53 (4) – Dec 1, 2002
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References (7)

Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
Copyright © 2002 Wiley Subscription Services, Inc., A Wiley Company
ISSN
0007-1315
eISSN
1468-4446
DOI
10.1080/0007131022000021489
pmid
12556282
Publisher site
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Abstract

ABSTRACT A paper by Breen and Goldthorpe recently claimed to have exposed ‘fatal flaws’ in my work on meritocracy in Britain. This paper responds to their criticisms. The results of their re‐analysis of the NCDS data set are shown to be consistent with my earlier findings and arguments. Furthermore, re‐running some of my earlier models using measures that they favour and a method designed to privilege their position, the results once again demonstrate that, while class origins have some effect on class destinations (in particular, for those born into the middle class), ability and effort exert a much greater effect. Based on these results, the paper identifies three core propositions about meritocracy in Britain on which all parties to this debate should now be able to agree.

Journal

The British Journal of Sociology – Wiley

Published: Dec 1, 2002

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