Born poor? Bad luck, you have won last prize in the lottery of life

The rise of individualism and the celebration of the private over the public is undermining the strength of our social institutions

Will Hutton
The Observer, Saturday 14 July 2012

The economic and social crises are merging. The protracted "contained" depression is making life ever harder and disillusioning for those, and their children, trapped at the bottom – while making those at the top ever more robust about looking after themselves and their own. A mean world growing still meaner fosters division and mutual suspicion.

In the US, Robert Putnam, the pioneering social scientist whose book Bowling Alone set out an electrifying account of a new American loneliness, has been revealing the results of another round of social research. Class is becoming ever more important as a determinant of outcomes in American life; it now trumps race, he argues, and the differences can be observed very early on in the children of different classes.