Data for social mobility: Improving the collection and availability of data across government

Data has the power to provide understanding of the causes of poor life outcomes. However, there are often gaps in the data and barriers to sharing and linking data, which limits the scope for potential analyses to shed light on the causes of socio-economic disadvantage and its implications on social mobility. The Social Mobility Commission contracted NFER to identify the current barriers to finding and using socio-economic data, to outline an ambition of what an improved data environment could look like and how it might benefit future policymaking.