It’s a struggle to leave behind the wealth or poverty of our birthplace

A person growing up in East Hertfordshire in the 1970s when unemployment was 1.9% would have had better economic prospects than someone in Liverpool, where the unemployment rate was more than 10%. Photograph: George W Johnson/Getty Images

Where you are born matters a lot. There’s the accent, of course, but I mean in rather less superficial ways. It’s the breadth of those impacts that stands out in a new study from London School of Economics researchers, which shows how the economic circumstances of where and when we were born shape far more than our economic outcomes – moulding everything from our cultural outlooks to voting patterns.

The authors join up data tracking British individuals’ attitudes and earnings from 1991 to 2008 with details of the unemployment level in their place of birth – a key measure of economic insecurity.