IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ahe/invest/v06y2010i02p11-38.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Was There Ever a Ruling Class? A Proposal for the study of 800 Years of Social Mobility

Author

Listed:
  • Gregory Clark

    (University of California, Davis)

Abstract

This paper reports on a preliminary investigation of surnames distributions as a measure long run social mobility. In England this suggests two surprising claims. First, England, all the way from the heart of the Middle Ages in 1250 to at least 1860, was a society without persistent social classes. It was a world of social mobility, with no permanent over-class and under-class, a world of complete equal opportunity. There was, however, a gain from being in the upper class in any generation in the form of leaving more copies of your DNA permanently in later populations. Second, signs of persistent social classes have only emerged in societies like England and the United States in recent years. Instead of moving from a world of immobility and class rigidity to a world of equal opportunity, we have moved in the opposite direction. KEY Classification-JEL: N33, N34, N62

Suggested Citation

  • Gregory Clark, 2010. "Was There Ever a Ruling Class? A Proposal for the study of 800 Years of Social Mobility," Investigaciones de Historia Económica - Economic History Research (IHE-EHR), Journal of the Spanish Economic History Association, Asociación Española de Historia Económica, vol. 6(02), pages 11-38.
    • Handle: RePEc:ahe:invest:v:06:y:2010:i:02:p:11-38
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://recyt.fecyt.es/index.php/IHE/article/view/70248/42475
    Download Restriction: This is an Open Access journal
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mccloskey, Deirdre N., 2008. "‘You know, Ernest, the rich are different from you and me’: a comment on Clark's A Farewell to Alms," European Review of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(2), pages 138-148, August.
    2. Becker, Gary S, 1988. "Family Economics and Macro Behavior," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(1), pages 1-13, March.
    3. Samuel Bowles & Herbert Gintis, 2002. "The Inheritance of Inequality," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 16(3), pages 3-30, Summer.
    4. Solon, Gary, 1999. "Intergenerational mobility in the labor market," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 29, pages 1761-1800, Elsevier.
    5. Clark, Gregory & Hamilton, Gillian, 2006. "Survival of the Richest: The Malthusian Mechanism in Pre-Industrial England," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 66(03), pages 707-736, September.
    6. Gary S. Becker & Nigel Tomes, 1994. "Human Capital and the Rise and Fall of Families," NBER Chapters, in: Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis with Special Reference to Education, Third Edition, pages 257-298, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. E.A. Wasson, 1998. "The Penetration of New Wealth into the English Governing Class from the Middle Ages to the First World War," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 51(1), pages 25-48, February.
    8. Clark, Gregory, 2008. "In defense of the Malthusian interpretation of history," European Review of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(2), pages 175-199, August.
    9. Clark, Gregory & Hamilton, Gillian, 2006. "Survival of the Richest: The Malthusian Mechanism in Pre-Industrial England," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 66(3), pages 707-736, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Arnaud Lefranc & Alain Trannoy, 2005. "Intergenerational earnings mobility in France: Is France more mobile than the U.S.?," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 78, pages 57-77.
    2. Black, Sandra E. & Devereux, Paul J. & Salvanes, Kjell G., 2009. "Like father, like son? A note on the intergenerational transmission of IQ scores," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 105(1), pages 138-140, October.
    3. Clark, Gregory & Cummins, Neil, 2016. "The Child Quality-Quantity Tradeoff, England, 1780-1880: A Fundamental Component of the Economic Theory of Growth is Missing," CEPR Discussion Papers 11232, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. María Cervini-Plá, 2013. "Exploring the Sources of Earnings Transmission in Spain," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 204(1), pages 45-66, March.
    5. Eisenhauer, Philipp & Pfeiffer, Friedhelm, 2008. "Assessing intergenerational earnings persistence among German workers," Zeitschrift für ArbeitsmarktForschung - Journal for Labour Market Research, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany], vol. 41(2/3), pages 119-137.
    6. Huebener, Mathias, 2015. "The role of paternal risk attitudes in long-run education outcomes and intergenerational mobility," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 64-79.
    7. Rumberger, Russell W., 2010. "Education and the reproduction of economic inequality in the United States: An empirical investigation," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 246-254, April.
    8. Yuanyuan Chen & Shuaizhang Feng, 2011. "Parental Education and Wages: Evidence from China," Frontiers of Economics in China-Selected Publications from Chinese Universities, Higher Education Press, vol. 6(4), pages 568-591, December.
    9. Marco Francesconi & Cheti Nicoletti, 2006. "Intergenerational mobility and sample selection in short panels," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(8), pages 1265-1293, December.
    10. Eriksson, Tor & Bratsberg, Bernt & Raaum, Oddbjørn, 2005. "Earnings persistence across generations: Transmission through health?," Memorandum 35/2005, Oslo University, Department of Economics.
    11. Valentino Dardanoni & Mario Fiorini & Antonio Forcina, 2012. "Stochastic monotonicity in intergenerational mobility tables," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(1), pages 85-107, January.
    12. Jeremiah Richey & Alicia Rosburg, 2018. "Decomposing economic mobility transition matrices," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(1), pages 91-108, January.
    13. Mazzonna, Fabrizio, 2014. "The long-lasting effects of family background: A European cross-country comparison," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 25-42.
    14. Doepke, Matthias & Zilibotti, Fabrizio, 2014. "Culture, Entrepreneurship, and Growth," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1-48, Elsevier.
    15. Eisenhauer, Philipp & Pfeiffer, Friedhelm, 2008. "Assessing intergenerational earnings persistence among German workers," Zeitschrift für ArbeitsmarktForschung - Journal for Labour Market Research, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany], vol. 41(2/3), pages 119-137.
    16. Jason Collins & Boris Baer & Ernst Juerg Weber, 2016. "Evolutionary Biology in Economics: A Review," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 92(297), pages 291-312, June.
    17. P. Jenkins, Stephen & Jäntti, Markus, 2013. "Income mobility," ISER Working Paper Series 2013-23, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    18. Marc Klemp & Chris Minns & Patrick Wallis & Jacob Weisdorf, 2013. "Picking winners? The effect of birth order and migration on parental human capital investments in pre-modern England," European Review of Economic History, European Historical Economics Society, vol. 17(2), pages 210-232, May.
    19. Carmen Aina & Cheti Nicoletti, 2014. "The intergenerational transmission of liberal professions: nepotism versus abilities," Discussion Papers 14/14, Department of Economics, University of York.
    20. Richey, Jeremiah & Rosburg, Alicia, 2016. "Understanding intergenerational economic mobility by decomposing joint distributions," MPRA Paper 72665, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Intergenerational Mobility; Inequality;

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • J62 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Job, Occupational and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion
    • N30 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - General, International, or Comparative

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ahe:invest:v:06:y:2010:i:02:p:11-38. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Elena Garcia Cruz (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeheeea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.