Well-off create ‘glass floor’ for kids

Well-off parents create a “glass floor” for their less academically inclined children ensuring they “hoard the best opportunities” over poorer peers, a study has suggested.

Children from wealthier families, but with less academic ability, are 35% more likely to become high earners than their more gifted counterparts from poor families, according to findings from the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission.

The study, entitled Downward Mobility, Opportunity Hoarding and the ‘Glass’ Floor, looked at the lives of 17,000 people born in Britain in the same week in 1970.