Social mobility from the middle to the top

High-quality panel datasets from South Africa and Ghana were used by the TSITICA project to define asset and wealth bundles that facilitate or hinder social mobility. This research was largely based on the poverty dynamics literature, which links social mobility to the probabilities of staying in poverty or falling into poverty. While this approach is valuable in highlighting the capacities of the most-vulnerable people to respond to climate change and climate actions, it is somewhat a weak instrument for tracking and explaining social mobility through the middle classes and into the elite, and for assessing the racial divides which intersect with economic inequality.

A follow-on study for the TSITICA project, therefore, undertook to explore which drivers facilitate or hinder social mobility from the middle classes to the top in the context of developing countries. The research aims to:

• Provide a critical review of the enablers of social mobility from a sustainability and equitable growth perspective, which can help inform policies and climate actions, particularly those that seek to redress inequality. 
• Identify methodological implications for social mobility analyses from a Global South perspective, drawing on the South African National Income Dynamics Study and the Ghanaian Socio-Economics Panel Study.

The research is also based on literature on African middle classes and elites to contribute a much-needed perspective from the Global South, and on data from the wealth surveys of the International Inequalities Institute, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

Dissemination