According to a new book, The Son Also Rises, by academic Gregory Clark there is a myth about social mobility. Contrary to brighter estimates, which suggest that past prosperity or poverty can be erased in three to four generations, Clark reckons it takes 10 to 15. Our chances of getting on in life are largely down to what our family did 300 years ago.
Our parents' salary accounts for a mere 10 per cent variation in a person's status, whereas our long-term lineage accounts for a variance of between 50 and 60 per cent. What that means, in effect, is that if your family were shopkeepers 200 years ago, the likelihood is you may be, too.
Clark suggests that mobility in feudal England was not vastly different to today. Upwardly mobile artisans working in the 12th century took eight generations to be absorbed into the educated elite of the 16th century. Despite the introduction of inheritance tax and rapid industrialisation, the 21st-century descendant of the 1 per centers of mid-Victorian England are likely to be three times as wealthy as the average man or woman on the bus.
"Social mobility rates are similar across societies that vary dramatically in their institutions and income levels. Cradle-to-grave socialist Sweden and dog-eat-dog, free-to-lose America have similar rates. Communist China and capitalist Taiwan have similar rates. Homogenous Japan and the ethnically fractured US also have similar rates," he says. "Only extreme, drastic and unacceptable state interventions have any hope of increasing social mobility." Not even the Communist Revolution in China in 1949 managed to have a lasting, pervasive effect on mobility, according to his study.
From here
Our parents' salary accounts for a mere 10 per cent variation in a person's status, whereas our long-term lineage accounts for a variance of between 50 and 60 per cent. What that means, in effect, is that if your family were shopkeepers 200 years ago, the likelihood is you may be, too.
Clark suggests that mobility in feudal England was not vastly different to today. Upwardly mobile artisans working in the 12th century took eight generations to be absorbed into the educated elite of the 16th century. Despite the introduction of inheritance tax and rapid industrialisation, the 21st-century descendant of the 1 per centers of mid-Victorian England are likely to be three times as wealthy as the average man or woman on the bus.
"Social mobility rates are similar across societies that vary dramatically in their institutions and income levels. Cradle-to-grave socialist Sweden and dog-eat-dog, free-to-lose America have similar rates. Communist China and capitalist Taiwan have similar rates. Homogenous Japan and the ethnically fractured US also have similar rates," he says. "Only extreme, drastic and unacceptable state interventions have any hope of increasing social mobility." Not even the Communist Revolution in China in 1949 managed to have a lasting, pervasive effect on mobility, according to his study.
From here
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