One of the first ‘achievements’ of the coalition government was the abolition of the child trust fund. This move not only removed one of the first universal asset-based policies to develop globally, but also showed a pernicious side of a government willing to remove opportunities from young people’s futures. While it is not possible to go into detail here into the resulting lost possibilities, we can focus on the issue of social mobility to illustrate the consequences of this decision.
Barriers to social mobility can take a number of forms: family structure, skill level, disability, age, low labour demand, and ethnic group. Only one of these relates to education and as such we need an approach to social mobility which is more comprehensive than a solely education focus. Here the CTF offered potential. Whilst criticised for not limiting the end-use of funds, (as is the case with some American schemes), the policy was designed to allow young people free choice in how they used their funds. However, if we are concerned with ensuring that everybody’s life goes well (what better reason to be in politics?), then we must promote notions of personal responsibility which dictate that the fate of each person should be sensitive to their own choices. As such, the CTF sought to reflect that sensitivity to choices while being insensitive to their circumstances – by providing greater support to the least well-off, but leaving the choices over the use of the asset to the individual. In its own way the CTF granted greater flexibility and may have helped to generate a more personalised approach to tackling social mobility to reverse its decline, consequently developing a broader policy response to the challenges of social mobility. The potential of the CTF as a tool for social mobility was never given the opportunity to be adequately tested, yetit will be interesting to see how 18-year-olds in 2020, those few who still have their accounts, make use of their funds.
As I argue in the longer version of this article, ‘despite criticism, the CTF offered a means to tackle social immobility, provide opportunity freedom and empower young people in a way that further moves them out of poverty. Assets provide a means of achieving this in a way which does not associate with the negative and stigmatising attitudes often attributed to traditional income maintenance, but builds on the capabilities of individuals in a positive and liberating way.’ Such ideas become even more important when seeking policy options to help the ‘squeezed middle’. Many already rely on debt to prop up living standards while levels of savings are low in terms of both frequency and amount.
The CTF offered not only a means of fostering a savings habit but provided young people with an asset, at a key moment in their lives, to help support them to take up opportunities that would otherwise be denied them. As young people from families in the ‘squeezed middle’ enter a world where there are few job opportunities, university becomes unaffordable and relatively few other options exist, we need to ask how we can allow free choice in deciding one’s future, while tackling the inequalities that limit opportunities and social mobility. This was an opportunity the CTF provided and is now denied to so many.
Read the full article here
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Lee Gregory is a PhD Candidate at Cardiff School of Social Sciences
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