{"id":2950,"date":"2026-05-27T08:47:42","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T07:47:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/?p=2950"},"modified":"2026-05-27T08:47:42","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T07:47:42","slug":"disadvantaged-childhoods-create-hidden-barriers-that-limit-social-mobility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/2026\/05\/27\/disadvantaged-childhoods-create-hidden-barriers-that-limit-social-mobility\/","title":{"rendered":"Disadvantaged childhoods create hidden barriers that limit social mobility"},"content":{"rendered":"

Childhood disadvantage can shape how abilities are expressed, creating invisible barriers to success even among those with a high cognitive ability. <\/em>Chris Dawson<\/a>, Professor of Economics and Behavioural Science at the University of Bath, suggests that improving social mobility requires a holistic approach to child development, combining education policy with action on wider social and emotional environments.<\/em><\/p>\n

New research suggests that educational policy focused on raising cognitive skills alone may not be enough to reduce entrenched inequality. While cognitive skills are important, children from disadvantaged backgrounds may have fewer opportunities to learn that behaviours such as trust and cooperation are socially rewarded. As a result, the social and economic benefits normally associated with higher cognitive ability may be weaker for those who grow up in harsher environments.<\/p>\n

Holding back the benefits of intelligence<\/h2>\n

Efforts to reduce inequality should focus not only on children\u2019s cognitive skills, but also on the emotional and social environments in which they grow up. New analysis of more than 24,000 people across the UK<\/a> suggests that people who grow up in stable, secure and supportive environments not only develop stronger cognitive skills, but are also more likely to translate those skills into trust and the wider social and economic benefits that come with it.<\/p>\n

The new analysis also reveals that, in high-income countries, cognitive ability is strongly associated with interpersonal trust. \u00a0People with higher cognitive ability are more likely to be trusting and cooperative. Yet this relationship is substantially weaker in lower-income countries, suggesting that cognitive ability does not confer the same social advantages across different environments.<\/p>\n

Among people who experienced two or more forms of childhood disadvantage \u2014 such as growing up in workless households, single-parent families or care settings, or with parents who have lower levels of education or occupational status \u2014 higher cognitive ability is less strongly linked to trust in others than it is among those from more advantaged backgrounds.<\/p>\n

One explanation is that stable and supportive environments provide greater opportunities to learn that trust is socially rewarded. In such settings, cooperation with others is more likely to produce positive outcomes. People from more advantaged backgrounds may therefore be better placed to recognise the social and economic benefits of trust, and more able to override instinctive caution or distrust in uncertain situations.<\/p>\n

By contrast, people growing up in harsher environments, characterised by instability, crime, or unreliable institutions, may have fewer opportunities to experience trust as rewarding. As a result, high cognitive ability has less scope to translate into greater trust. Early adversity can also impose pervasive constraints \u2014 such as emotional dysregulation, chronic stress and negative affect \u2014 that limit the expression of cognitive abilities in social behaviours.<\/p>\n

Prioritising immediate needs hampers long-term gains<\/h2>\n

People from more advantaged backgrounds are also more likely to translate genetic variants associated with educational success into patience, forward planning and calculated risk-taking \u2014 behaviours that tend to generate long-term economic and financial rewards.<\/p>\n

In this study published earlier this year<\/a>, I analysed data from a nationally representative sample of adults aged 50 and over in England, and found that childhood disadvantage changes how people use the abilities they are born with. For people who grew up in disadvantaged circumstances, genetic variants associated with educational success are more likely to be expressed in caution, sensitivity to threats and potential losses, and prioritising immediate needs. These traits can discourage them from pursuing higher education, investing in career opportunities or improving their long-term financial security.<\/p>\n

In uncertain or unstable environments, prioritising short-term security over long-term rewards may be a practical response to everyday risks and pressures. Stable and supportive environments make it easier for people to see long-term planning and risk-taking as worthwhile. In more difficult environments, where insecurity and uncertainty are more common, there may be fewer opportunities for those behaviours to pay off.<\/p>\n

Childhood disadvantage therefore shapes not only the opportunities available to people, but also how their underlying abilities and potential are expressed in important behaviours that shape life outcomes. This may create less visible barriers to social mobility, even among those with a strong, innate capacity for success.<\/p>\n

Implications for policy<\/strong><\/h2>\n

These findings have important implications for early interventions in social policy, reinforcing the view that reducing inequality is not simply a matter of improving educational outcomes.<\/p>\n

Policies focused narrowly on raising cognitive skills may deliver uneven returns if children from disadvantaged backgrounds lack the social conditions needed to translate those gains into wider social and economic advantages. Educational policies focused solely on raising cognitive skills are, therefore, unlikely to be sufficient to tackle entrenched inequality.<\/p>\n

This research points towards a more holistic approach to child development, strengthening the case for policies aimed at reducing family instability, child poverty and exposure to crime. By combining education policy with family support, mental health provision, youth services and neighbourhood renewal, policymakers can address the wider social and emotional conditions in which children grow up. These may have long-term benefits that extend beyond educational attainment alone.<\/p>\n

Place-based regeneration policies that improve neighbourhood safety, strengthen community organisations and increase social connectedness may have lasting developmental effects. Likewise, policies that strengthen confidence in public institutions \u2014 including schools, policing, social services and local government \u2014 may play an indirect but important role in reducing long-term inequality.<\/p>\n

All articles posted on this blog give the views of the author(s), and not the position of the IPR, nor of the University of Bath.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Childhood disadvantage can shape how abilities are expressed, creating invisible barriers to success even among those with a high cognitive ability. Chris Dawson, Professor of Economics and Behavioural Science at the University of Bath, suggests that improving social mobility requires...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2050,"featured_media":2951,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[113,149],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-young-people"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/115\/2026\/05\/Disadvantaged-childhoods-create-hidden-barriers-that-limit-social-mobility-scaled.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2050"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}