Where you are born matters a lot. There’s the accent, of course, but I mean in rather less superficial ways. It’s the breadth of those impacts that stands out in a new study from London School of Economics researchers, which shows how the economic circumstances of where and when we were born shape far more than our economic outcomes – moulding everything from our cultural outlooks to voting patterns.
The authors join up data tracking British individuals’ attitudes and earnings from 1991 to 2008 with details of the unemployment level in their place of birth – a key measure of economic insecurity.
Those growing up in areas of high unemployment have lower earnings later in life. Maybe that’s not surprising, but note it’s true even after accounting for their education levels, parental background and economic conditions where they now live.
Being born in early 1970s Liverpool, where the unemployment rate was more than 10%, hits your annual earnings by £677 versus an identical individual born in East Hertfordshire, where unemployment was 1.9% (it was the 1970s and following two decades that saw unemployment levels rise and vary more across the country).
The economics of our birth don’t just affect our economics, they shape our values. Those born in high unemployment areas are more likely to adopt leftwing attitudes towards the role of the state – visible evidence when young that life is about luck not just effort is an important lesson – but also less progressive cultural values (specifically on gender roles). And it affects politics: the Conservative party loses almost half a percentage point of support for each extra percentage point of unemployment when and where we were born.
Interesting stuff, but what’s the lesson? Choose where you are born, not just who to, carefully.
• Torsten Bell is chief executive of the Resolution Foundation. Read more at
