We have a narrow conception of how luck affects our life chances and outcomes, which means that we underplay the role of luck in life. This has real-world implications for how we think society should work, what aspects of society today are problematic and what solutions we are willing to support to solve those problems. We want to believe that people get what they deserve, and that merit plays a bigger role in deciding where people end up than external factors that people can’t control.
As a result, most people believe that hard work is key in deciding whether or not they will ‘get ahead in life’. Being lucky is seen as much less important, for two reasons. The first is that luck is normally defined in a very narrow sense of random chance events that might happen to us in the future. The second is that many people underestimate the impact of structural drivers of life chances, such as whether someone is born into a family with financial and/or social capital (and what talents someone is born with).
Our hypothesis is that most people don't think about these broader structural drivers in terms of luck, but that if they did, they might decide that these structural issues are more important than they thought, and that because they are so unevenly distributed throughout society, we should do more to even things up. We want to find out whether talking about structural issues in terms of luck is a useful way of persuading more people to support reforms that will tackle inequality and build a fairer society.
We've carried out some initial polling to explore what people think about the impact of luck on their and other people’s life chances and outcomes, how much they associate structural drivers with luck, whether they think society should do more to reduce the role of luck in life, and how these attitudes vary based on the characteristics of the respondent. Polling only gets you so far, especially for such a complex and nebulous topic, but we think it provides a useful starting point for thinking about this issue.
What did our polling find? Most people think they have been affected by bad luck; only one in ten say they have had good luck. However, more people say that luck has had a small impact on their life than a large impact. Meanwhile, people think physical health and education are within their control, but not mental health; and they associate talent, education, family wealth and productivity more with merit than with luck. Finally, a large majority of people think we need to do more to reduce the impact of luck on people’s lives.
This report sets out our thinking about the philosophy of luck and why too much luck is unfair, how important luck really is in influencing our lives, how we can reduce the influence of luck on our lives, what people in the UK think about luck (with insights from our new opinion polling), how and why we think about luck in this way, and why the way we think about luck matters. This report is the first phase in a larger project; next, we plan to carry out some qualitative and framing research on how to shift mindsets and attitudes around luck.
Research by King’s College London has shown that, when it comes to attitudes to life, the British public are split three ways between individualists, structuralists and those in the middle. Individualists emphasise the importance of hard work and other factors that are within people’s control in influencing how people’s lives turn out. Structuralists are more focused on systemic barriers or boosts that are outside people’s control, such as whether they are born into a wealthy or poor family, or the state of the job market.
While recent events such as COVID, the cost-of-living crisis and the increasing pressures on public services have opened more people’s eyes to the impact of poverty, poor quality housing or jobs and so on, there is still a dominant meritocratic narrative in the media and politics, and in public consciousness - people believe that hard work is key in deciding whether or not they will ‘get ahead in life’.
A recent Ipsos report on attitudes to success in the UK bears this out. People think that success depends mostly on hard work (and treating other people well). Being lucky is ranked bottom.
There are two issues with how we think about the role of luck in life. The first is that we underestimate the impact of luck, in the narrower sense of random chance events, on how our lives turn out. The second is that we don’t pay enough attention to the broader definition of luck - what talents someone is born with, whether they have had a good education, whether they were born into a family with financial and/or social capital. If we do think about luck, we focus on what might happen in the future more than what has already taken place.
The combined effect of these two issues is that we underplay the extent to which ‘success’ in life is in large part outside people’s control, and down to luck.
This holds us back from recognising issues that unfairly hinder millions of people.
Most people in Britain recognise that we don’t live in a fair society. Despite this, the meritocratic mindset still exerts a powerful hold on our national identity and conversation. We want to believe that people get what they deserve, and that merit plays a bigger role in deciding where people end up than external factors that people can’t control.
This is especially true of the wealthiest in society, who want to justify their position to others and to themselves, but it is also the case that people with the least resources are often unfairly blamed for their plight. This mindset helps to legitimate a profoundly unmeritocratic status quo in which inequalities and unfairness are rife.
If more of us recognised the role that luck plays in life, there would be greater public support for policies to cushion the impact of bad luck on people, as well as policies to spread around some of the good luck. These might include taxing wealth more fairly and investing more in high-quality, universal public services and a better social safety net.
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We think this needs to change, so we are exploring attitudes to luck and how to influence them.
Luck is a potentially useful way of thinking and talking about the impact of structural and systemic issues on people’s life chances and outcomes, and why and how we might want to take action to reduce the role of luck in life. In particular, it could be a good way to make these arguments to people who think in more individualistic and meritocratic ways.
We’ve carried out new polling to understand how much people associate structural and systemic drivers with luck, how much they think life outcomes are influenced by luck in this broader sense, whether we should reduce the role of luck in life, and how much attitudes vary based on demographic and political factors (and respondents’ views on their own luck).
We want to use this to help us to design some more in-depth research, including qualitative and framing research, on how to shift mindsets and attitudes around luck. This report takes a deep dive into the topic, exploring our polling findings as well as the broader concepts and realities.The report is structured in six sections, set out below.
