‘Poorer children mixing with wealthier peers can lead to higher earnings’
Researchers said levels of happiness and wellbeing also appeared to be affected positively by social mixing.
Children in poorer families but living in areas where people from different economic backgrounds mix and make friends grow up to earn more in later life, according to research.
An earnings boost of around £5,100-a-year on average was experienced by adults in England whose childhood in a low-income family had been spent in an area where there were so-called “cross-class friendships”, the research into social connection found.
The study, involving anonymised data from Facebook for approximately 20 million UK residents aged 25 to 64, also suggested that such “cross-class” friendships are relatively common in South East England, especially London.
But there were lower rates of what researchers called “economic connectedness” found in northern England, South Wales, the Scottish central belt and Northern Ireland.
While most childhood friendships are made in local neighbourhoods and secondary schools, researchers found hobbies such as sports groups were ripe for cross-class mixing.
They said: “High and low-income individuals in these groups form cross-class friendships at a higher rate than would be expected, given the rate at which they encounter each other in these spaces.”
The researchers used data on education outcomes to map earnings when someone had reached the age of 28 for children who had been eligible, aged 16, for free school meals – indicating they were in a low-income household – across English local authorities.
They said when this was combined with data from Facebook on social connections, “areas with higher economic connectedness exhibit substantially higher upward mobility”.
This led them to estimate children who grew up in low-income households but in the top 10% most economically connected local authorities ended up earning 38% more per year on average (£5,100) as adults than their peers who grew up in the bottom 10% of economically connected local authorities.
The researchers said their overall findings suggest that “bringing people from different socioeconomic backgrounds together – through more inclusive schools, workplaces, and community initiatives – may help to grow the cross-class friendships associated with better economic and social outcomes”.
They added that levels of happiness and wellbeing appeared to be affected by social mixing.
They said: “After controlling for personal income, people with the highest share of very high income friends (one in five) report 5% higher happiness levels and 23% greater trust, compared to people with the lowest share of very high-income friends (one in 40).”
The research, published on Monday, was carried out by a group of organisations including BIT (Behavioural Insights Team) and Facebook owner Meta.
Dr Antonio Silva, principal investigator and head of social cohesion at BIT, said: “As expected, cross-class friendships are more likely to happen in wealthier places but we still find a substantial amount of variation between places.
“While this is early research, it seems that cross-class friendships matter for future earnings. And indeed they may make us happier generally and more trusting of others.
“As most friendships are made in neighbourhoods and schools, these settings should be where we really focus on reducing segregation. We need to develop new ways of promoting connectedness across economic lines, whether by changing school catchment areas or building more mixed housing.”
