Evidence To Support Social Mobility Scheme Limited

Main Category: Pediatrics / Children's Health
Also Included In: Public Health
Article Date: 26 Aug 2009 - 12:00 PST

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The evidence that a new government scheme to award grants to disadvantaged families will promote social mobility is limited, according to a paper published on bmj.com today.

It comes just weeks after an independent report into social mobility found that top UK professions such as medicine and law are increasingly being closed off to all but the most affluent families.

Under the scheme, disadvantaged families will be offered child development grants of up to £200 (€233; $335) as long as they attend and take up services offered by Children's Centres, including parenting advice, liaison with job centres, and identification of children with special educational needs.

The idea is modelled on the conditional cash transfer schemes from Latin America that offer disadvantaged families money if, for example, mothers attend parenting seminars or infants attend health check-ups.

These schemes assume that targeted cash incentives will stimulate positive behaviour change and the same reasoning underpins the UK government's child development grants.

Although such schemes have been shown to improve health and health behaviours, they are controversial. So Dr Ian Forde and Dr Dagmar Zeuner reviewed the international evidence on conditional cash transfer schemes to throw light on whether a similar strategy can work in the UK.

They conclude that the evidence that child development grants will contribute to social mobility is currently limited.

They suggest that the services offered have to be of high quality, that the incentives proposed may need to be increased to bring about more complex behaviour change, and that targeting at the area level is probably most efficient, although special efforts may be required to include the most disadvantaged households.

Finally they say that further research is needed and that child development grants must be accompanied by a strategy for robust evaluation.

Link to paper

Source
British Medical Journal