According to this study reported at http://www.canada.com/edmonton/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=859a24a2-3184-49cf-a95f-b193529cde55, a lack of intergenerational mobility appears to be happening now in the US, the UK and in France, but it is not occurring in Canada and in many other countries, and it would be interesting to see where Australia stands internationally.

The author has identified education as being important in increasing the chances of intergenerational mobility, and has also identified the type of families and parents as being important, but reality has to be faced.

Single parent families are now the fastest growing family type in Australia, and single parent families have normally much less wealth to be able to give the children a suitable education. The longer Australia remains stuck in the belief that throw away marriages and easy divorce are beneficial to society, the worse it is going to become for future generations.

Fred, it seems clear that people born into dysfunctional families have fewer opportunities and can become trapped by their background. In my view, supported by a lot of US research, the most effective point at which to address this is in the early childhood of those in difficult family situations. Later interventions - such as adolescent and adult remedial programs, positive discrimination etc, tend to be costly and generally ineffective. While it won't help those who are no longer in early childhood, a focus on that age-group (with empirically proven programmes) has the most hope of long-term success. Better I think to put resources here rather than in extra years of high school.

What sort of equity is existing between

-born to rule and born to obey?
-born into havs and born into junkies?
-born in “underprivileged non-English first language” and born in “mainstream Australians”?

Equality of opportunity as an excellent ideal, but it is very difficult to measure because there is no way of knowing exactly what people want to do with their opportunities.

Fred Argy's article implies that income and occupational status are the measure of success, but isn't that rather arbitrary? "Children from low socio-economic backgrounds have much less chance of achieving management or professional positions over their lifetime than those with well-off parents," but who is to say that this is what they are (or should be) setting their sights on?

Oh yes, these silly undercaste idiots need case managers and Job Network to be guaided.

First of all, people need to be educated, employed and judged on merits of equity, not of biological and caste belonging as in an Australian UK-copycat reality.

Unless we make at least an honest attempt to give every Australian child equal access to a decent start and education, we must stop talking about people getting ahead on merit.
The concept of real merit and equality of opportunity (or, at least, the best we can do) are inextricably linked. Our current Federal Govt's obsession with giving more to kids whose families already have more is negating the idea of success based on merit. We are creating a class system, where mediocre kids of the better off are bought a better start, not only with their parent's money (which is understandable) but with subsidies from the government, which is not.
This means we squander much of our future because we promote on privilege rather than on merit.
In Britain they are trialling a program called Sure Start where they pour money into babies and pre-schoolers in disadvantaged areas. Why is their no talk of us doing something similar here?