For poor children to succeed, rich ones must fail
“玻璃天花板”与“玻璃地板”
广州翻译公司：奥康纳：人们熟知“玻璃天花板”，但研究发现，许多社会似乎都有一层“玻璃地板”，防止豪门后代滑至底层。
Florence in 1427. The people at the top of the ladder are members of the city’s powerful guilds, while those at the bottom are beating, cleaning and washing raw wool.
1427年的佛罗伦萨。在社会阶梯顶端的人都是这个城市中强大的行会的成员，而那些处于社会底层的人则从事拍打、清理和洗涤生羊毛的工作。广州翻译公司。
Fast-forward almost 600 years and while the jobs may have changed, the people have not. The very same families are still on top.
快进到近600年以后的今天，尽管工作可能发生了改变，人却没有。身处顶端的还是那些家族。
Researchers at the Bank of Italy have used surnames (which are relatively region-specific) as a proxy to inspect the fortunes of Florentine families since the 1427 census. They found the top-five earning surnames in 2011 were also the elites six centuries ago, when they were lawyers or members of the wool, silk and shoemaker guilds. The researchers found evidence of dynasties in some elite professions, such as banking and law.
意大利央行(Bank of Italy)的研究者们以姓氏（某些姓氏只属于某个特定地区的人）为索引，对自1427年人口普查以来佛罗伦萨不同家族的境况变迁进行了调查。他们发现，在2011年收入最高的5个姓氏在6个世纪以前也是精英，当时这些姓氏的人是律师或者羊毛、丝绸和鞋匠行会的成员。研究人员发现，有迹象显示，在银行和法律等精英行当中，有一些家族世世代代把持高位。广州翻译公司。
That is not to say there was no mobility. Lower-class people had a fairly good chance of rising to a higher position, but there seemed to be a “glass floor” that stopped the upper classes from sliding to the bottom.
并不是说没有社会流动性。中下阶层的人们有相当不错的几率能够上升到更高的社会阶层，但似乎有一层“玻璃地板”防止上层社会的人们滑至底层。
Florence is not unique. Studies (often using rare surnames to track families through generations) have found similar stories in countries as varied as
佛罗伦萨并不是唯一的例子。多项研究（通常使用较为罕见的姓氏来追踪家族在多个世代的境况）发现，从瑞典到中国，彼此差异很大的国家都有类似的情况。在英国，这种效果似乎要持续近6代才会逐渐消失。广州翻译公司。
So what? Why should we care if a “glass floor” protects the rich from becoming poor, so long as the poor can become rich? Until recently, we have not cared very much. But now we might not have a choice.
所以呢？只要穷人能够变富，我们为什么还要在意有没有一层“玻璃地板”保护富人不会变穷？直到不久前，我们并未太在意这个问题。但现在我们可能必须在意了。
There is a difference between relative and absolute mobility. Relative mobility measures whether you end up on a different rung of the income or social ladder from your parents. It is a zero-sum game: if someone moves up, someone else has to move down.
相对流动性和绝对流动性之间是有差异的。相对流动性衡量的是，你最终是否踏上了与你父母不同的收入或者社会阶层。这是一个零和游戏：如果有人往高处走，就会有另外的人不得不往低处来。广州翻译公司。
Absolute mobility simply measures whether you end up better off than your parents, regardless of what happens to everyone else. Over the course of the 20th century, absolute mobility increased in many countries as economies expanded and household incomes rose. The shape of developed economies also changed: an increase in professional and managerial roles (which happened alongside the expansion of higher education) created extra room at the top.
绝对流动性只衡量你是否最终比你的父母过得更好，不管其他所有人的情况。在整个20世纪，随着经济扩张、家庭收入上升，许多国家的绝对流动性都提高了。发达经济体的格局也发生了改变：（伴随着高等教育普及率的提高，）专业人士和管理人士职位增多，创造了额外的顶层空间。
Marion Kimberley, a 72-year-old Brit I interviewed last year, was one of many to ride this wave. Her mother would cry with worry when the rent was due. Ms Kimberley was the first in her family to go to university, and remembers her father's excitement when her first job as an academic came with a higher salary than his.
去年我采访过72岁的英国人玛丽昂•金伯利(Marion Kimberley)，她就是借上了这股东风的许多人之一。她的母亲当年每到要交房租的时候就会急得直哭，金伯利是家中第一个上大学的；她还记得父亲在得知她第一份工作——担任学者——的工资比他高时的兴奋之情。广州翻译公司。
But times are changing. Global growth has slowed sharply since the financial crisis. There is evidence that the latest generation may not be richer than their parents. If “room at the top” is no longer growing, social mobility starts to look more like that zero-sum game, in which upward mobility requires downward mobility too.
但时代在改变。自金融危机以后，全球增长大幅放缓。有证据表明，现在最小的这一代人可能不会比他们的父母更加富裕。如果“顶层空间”不再增多，社会流动性就会开始看起来更像是零和游戏：有向上的流动，就需要有向下的流动。
What stops people moving down? A study by the LSE’s Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion last year compared the fortunes of British children born in 1970 who had performed well or badly on cognitive tests when they were five years old. The low-attaining children with rich parents were doing better in the labour market by the age of 42 than those with poor parents. The rich bright kids did better than the poor bright kids, too. The study concluded that a powerful mix of factors was helping children of the wealthy to succeed, from social capital to private school and access to higher education.
是什么阻止了人们向下走？伦敦政治经济学院(LSE)社会排斥性分析中心(Centre for the Analysis of Social Exclusion)去年的一项研究，比较了出生于1970年的一些英国孩童的境况变化，其中一些在5岁时接受认知测试时表现良好，另一些表现糟糕。在他们42岁的时候，曾经在认知测试中得分较低、但有富裕的父母的孩子，在劳动市场的表现优于那些父母较为贫穷的孩子。聪明的富家孩子表现也优于聪明的穷孩子。该项研究得出结论，从社会资本、私立学校到获得高等教育的机会，多种强大因素组合在一起，帮助富裕家庭的孩子取得成功。广州翻译公司。
To boost relative mobility, you would need to unpick those privileges — or find a way to control for them — so the brightest could rise to the top, regardless of their backgrounds.
为了提高相对流动性，你就需要消除这些特权或者找到方法控制它们，让最聪明的人能够上升到顶端，无论他们来自何种背景。
That is tricky. It is hard to disentangle someone’s “pure talent” from their acquired advantages in a fair way. Some universities and employers are trying.
这很难办。很难以公平的方式，把某人的“纯粹天分”和他们后天获得的优势分开。一些大学和雇主正在尝试。英国公司Rare推出了一个产品，使用数据分析，在考虑候选人背景的情况下衡量他们所取得的成就。广州翻译公司。
It is also politically treacherous. When the UK civil service suggested this month it would take into account candidates’ schools and backgrounds, Lord Waldegrave, the provost of Eton College, threatened to resign the Conservative party whip in protest at what he saw as discrimination against the privately educated.
这在政治上也暗藏危险。当英国内阁办公室部长上月提出将考虑求职者的学校和家庭背景时，伊顿公学(Eton College)校长沃尔德格雷夫勋爵(Lord Waldegrave)威胁辞去保守党党鞭一职，以抗议在他看来对私立学校毕业生的歧视。
These are early skirmishes in a fight over how to divide a cake that is barely growing. Either we find a way to revive productivity and growth, or we accept the alternative: that if we want more poor kids to climb up, we need more rich kids to slide down.
在一场围绕如何分切一个几乎没有增长的蛋糕的斗争中，这些只是刚刚冒头的小冲突。我们要么找到办法重振生产率和增长，要么接受另一种方案，那就是：如果我们想要让更多穷孩子往高处走，我们就需要更多的富孩子往低处来。
