economic ladder

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

an idiom describing the hierarchical structure of economic positions available in a society as a ladder whose rungs represent successive income or occupational levels, and describing the development process — for individuals, families, or nations — as the act of climbing from lower to higher rungs through effort, education, opportunity, and time; the economic ladder metaphor is central to narratives of meritocracy and social mobility, implying that the hierarchy is legitimate, that the rungs are accessible to those who work hard enough, and that upward movement is the natural direction of aspiration; in development economics the metaphor is applied to nations climbing from low-income to middle-income to high-income status through industrialisation and productivity growth; critics of the metaphor note that it individualises what are structural processes, obscures the ways in which climbing by some may depend on others remaining below, and implies a single path of development that ignores the diversity of routes through which prosperity can be achieved