Riyaz Patel
Despite government’s substantial spending aimed at reducing inequality, SA is one of the worst performing nations in terms of social mobility, a new report from the World Economic Forum (WEF) shows.
This miserable ranking is a result of poor education, health and employment outcomes, stymieing the chances of citizens to move out of poverty.
It uses 10 pillars, which in turn are broken down into five determinants of social mobility – health, education, technology access, work opportunities, working conditions and fair wages and finally, social protection and inclusive institutions to measure social mobility – or the ability of children to have better lives than their parents.
South Africa ranked 77 out of 82 countries in the Forum’s inaugural social mobility index, released Monday ahead of the start of the annual WEF gathering in Davos, Switzerland.
The report’s findings come despite government’s substantial spending aimed at reducing inequality, which will see 48% of the budget in the coming three years go to social grants, education and health.
The headline finding of the report is that “most economies are failing to provide the conditions in which their citizens can thrive,” often by a large margin.
As a result, an individual’s opportunities in life remain tethered to their socio-economic status at birth, entrenching historical inequalities.
The WEF said reversing the outlook is possible but would require concerted action, political will and time.
The index suggests that governments must play the role of equalizer, levelling the playing field for all citizens, regardless of their socio-economic background.
The report suggests:
- Creating a new financing model for social mobility: improving tax progressivity on personal income, policies that address wealth concentration and broadly re-balancing the sources of taxation can support the social mobility agenda. Most importantly though, the mix of public spending and policy incentives must change to put greater emphasis on the factors of social spending.
- More support for education and lifelong learning: targeted at improvements in the availability, quality and distribution of education programmes as well as a new agenda for promoting skills development throughout an individual’s working life. This includes a new approach to jointly financing such efforts between the public and private sector.
- Developing a new social protection contract: this would offer holistic protection to all workers irrespective of their employment status, particularly in a context of technological change and industry transitions, requiring greater support for job transitions in the coming decade.
Nordic countries were found to be the best performers.
Denmark tops the rankings with a social mobility score of 85.2, followed by Finland (83.6), Norway (83.6), Sweden (83.5) and Iceland (82.7).
These nations, the report states, combine access, quality and equity in education, while also providing work opportunities and good working conditions, alongside quality social protection and inclusive institutions.
