Social class and social mobility among ICAEW members from the interwar period to the present day

ABSTRACT In the recent political and academic debate over social exclusivity and inequality in Britain, accountancy has come in for specific criticism. The Milburn panel on fair access to the professions concluded that accountancy has seen the greatest decline in social mobility. Through the use of a postal questionnaire of members of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW), this study challenges this assessment by demonstrating that historically the ICAEW has always had a significant proportion of members from the lower middle and working classes. However, in recent decades there has been an increase in the proportion from the upper middle class and a decline in those from the lower classes. This shift was not due to educational changes such as the decline of grammar schools or the rise of the graduate profession but resulted from the reduced role of medium- and small-sized firms in recruitment and training and the rise in importance of the largest accounting firms which have always tended to take on trainees from higher social backgrounds.