Social Mobility and Equality of Opportunity

Abstract

Ladies and gentlemen, director, colleagues and friends: it is a great honour and a pleasure to be asked to deliver this year’s Geary lecture, coming, as it does, on the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI). Over the years many eminent economists and sociologists have given the Geary lecture, but I believe that I am one of the few who knew Roy Geary personally because we were colleagues here during the last few years of his life.