Britain’s 2015 social mobility stats aren’t that hot. Rich people freeze those from less affluent backgrounds out of internships and students don’t have any grants to help them pay for higher education anymore. Now there’s proof that the privileges that the rich enjoy mean that they’re 35 percent more likely to be successful than those from less affluent backgrounds.

This is irrespective of how clever they are or how well they do at school. A new report from the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission looked at the lives of 17,000 people born in Britain in the same week in 1970 and checked out what they were all up to at the age of 42. The education of parents correlated with the career success of the kids and the connections fostered by well-educated parents gave their kids a career advantage. Poorer young people did not have the same advantages and this inequality proved to have a huge bearing on how their lives turned out.

The report says: “This amounts to opportunity hoarding and results in fewer opportunities available for equally able but less connected children.” One of the issues that the report found was that there was no "downward mobility". If we are going to have upward social mobility and equality, this implies a meritocracy, not because their parents are well off. By proxy, if someone is lazy and untalented, but just born into a rich family, they shouldn’t end up in well-paid jobs.

Because there isn‘t enough social mobility in either direction, the report found that “children from more advantaged family backgrounds are more likely to have high earnings in later adult life and are more likely to be in a “top job”. This is not simply due to different levels of cognitive ability as it holds within attainment groups as well as over the complete distribution.”

The report also found a gender gap, and that women are way less likely to be in a top job or in high paid work than men, regardless of their social status. The gender gap transcends class. So essentially, the report found that you do best in life if you are a rich man. Guess you already knew.