The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility
Gregory Clark - Princeton University Press, 2014
How much of our fate is tied to the status of our parents and grandparents?
How much does this influence our children? More than we wish to believe. While
it has been argued that rigid class structures have eroded in favor of greater
social equality, The Son Also Rises proves that movement on the social
ladder has changed little over eight centuries. Using a novel
technique--tracking family names over generations to measure social mobility
across countries and periods--renowned economic historian Gregory Clark reveals
that mobility rates are lower than conventionally estimated, do not vary across
societies, and are resistant to social policies. The good news is that these
patterns are driven by strong inheritance of abilities and lineage does not
beget unwarranted advantage. The bad news is that much of our fate is
predictable from lineage. Clark argues that since a greater part of our place in
the world is predetermined, we must avoid creating winner-take-all
societies.
Clark examines and compares surnames in such diverse cases as modern Sweden,
fourteenth-century England, and Qing Dynasty China. He demonstrates how fate is
determined by ancestry and that almost all societies--as different as the modern
United States, Communist China, and modern Japan--have similarly low social
mobility rates. These figures are impervious to institutions, and it takes
hundreds of years for descendants to shake off the advantages and disadvantages
of their ancestors. For these reasons, Clark contends that societies should act
to limit the disparities in rewards between those of high and low social
rank.
Challenging popular assumptions about mobility and revealing the deeply
entrenched force of inherited advantage, The Son Also Rises is sure to
prompt intense debate for years to come.
