The Son Also Rises : : Surnames and the History of Social Mobility / / Gregory Clark.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press Complete eBook-Package 2014-2015
• VerfasserIn: Clark, Gregory,
• TeilnehmendeR: Cummins, Neil.; Hao, Yu.; Vidal, Daniel Diaz.
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2014]; ©2015
• Year of Publication: 2014
• Edition: Pilot project. eBook available to selected US libraries only
• Language: English
• Series: The Princeton Economic History of the Western World ; 49
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (384 p.) :; 15 halftones. 111 line illus. 50 tables. 7 maps.

How much of our fate is tied to the status of our parents and grandparents? How much does it 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.Clark examines and compares surnames in such diverse cases as modern Sweden and Qing Dynasty China. He demonstrates how fate is determined by ancestry and that almost all societies have similarly low social mobility rates. 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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- 1. Introduction: Of Ruling Classes and Underclasses: Th e Laws of Social Mobility -- PART I. Social Mobility by Time and Place -- 2. Sweden: Mobility Achieved? -- 3. The United States: Land of Opportunity -- 4. Medieval England: Mobility in the Feudal Age -- 5. Modern England: Th e Deep Roots of the Present -- 6. A Law of Social Mobility -- 7. Nature versus Nurture -- PART II. Testing the Laws of Mobility -- 8. India: Caste, Endogamy, and Mobility -- 9. China and Taiwan: Mobility aft er Mao -- 10. Japan and Korea: Social Homogeneity and Mobility -- 11. Chile: Mobility among the Oligarchs -- 12. The Law of Social Mobility and Family Dynamics -- 13. Protestants, Jews, Gypsies, Muslims, and Copts: Exceptions to the Law of Mobility? -- 14. Mobility Anomalies -- PART III. The Good Society -- 15. Is Mobility Too Low? Mobility versus Inequality -- 16. Escaping Downward Social Mobility -- Appendix 1: measuring social mobility -- Appendix 2: deriving mobility rates from surname frequencies -- Appendix 3: discovering the status of your surname lineage -- Data sources for figures and tables -- References -- Index -- Backmatter