The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility by Gregory Clark (review)

Many of capitalism’s defenders argue that capitalism, despite its inevitable (and often extreme) inequality, is essentially “fair” because it provides each of us with the opportunity—“a fair chance”—to succeed. Class, status, and income mobility are possible for those who make the right choices.

Efforts to measure mobility have typically looked at economic and social outcomes for individuals relative to those of their parents. How likely, for example, is a person born in the bottom quintile of the income distribution to rise to the middle quintile, or the top quintile? How strong is the correlation between the social statuses (measured variously) of fathers and sons? A strong correlation suggests that social mobility is limited—your life chances depend on “where you come from” more than “merit.” Recent studies of this sort generally conclude that (a) status at birth is a key determinant of one’s status in adulthood (mobility is limited); (b) mobility varies across capitalist countries, and (c) countries with relatively equal distributions of income (e.g. Sweden, Norway, Denmark) tend to enjoy higher rates of mobility.

Gregory Clark’s The Son Also Rises is an impressive, nervy and, ultimately, troubling book that challenges widely held ideas about the extent and determinants of mobility. Clark is persuaded that his book challenges conventional wisdom on mobility in some very essential ways.

Clark argues persuasively that studies that look at data over just one generation tend to overstate the degree of social mobility. To move beyond the limitations of this literature (and the data on which it is based), Clark traces over time the fortunes of families with unusual surnames, to see how members of these families fare—using various markers of economic and social success—over several generations. He undertakes this exercise using data from several countries: Sweden, US, England, India, China, Chile, Japan and Korea, among others. Clark’s research suggests that families tend to retain their status to a remarkable extent over many generations—“regression to the mean” is slow. In each of his several case studies, Clark concludes that surnames associated with “high status” several generations ago continue to be “over-represented” among elites. Similarly, those with surnames that were of “low status” several generations ago are disproportionately of low status. Clark discovers, for example, that Swedes with historically elite surnames continue to be over-represented in high status professions (physicians, lawyers, university professors). Similarly, rare surnames associated with high status in early nineteenth century England continue to be associated with high status today. People with these surnames are, e.g., much wealthier than average, and they are over-represented among recent Oxford and Cambridge students by a factor of six.

Clark’s clever technique—following surnames over time—provides some fascinating and persuasive stories about the durability of social status across generations. But, unfortunately, this isn’t enough for Professor Clark. Clark concludes—from his compelling but less-than-conclusive data—that there is a “law of mobility,” a law that holds across time and across societies. “This book suggests…there is a universal constant of intergenerational correlation of 0.75, from which deviations are rare…” (p. 12). That is, rates of social mobility in twenty-first century Sweden, Medieval England, the twentieth century U.S. and nineteenth century Japan are essentially the same. Culture, social institutions, discrimination, government policies have little effect. Indeed, the “rate of persistence” (the tendency for families to retain their social status over time) is just “a little higher for the feudal England of the Middle Ages than for the progressive, equality-loving, social-democratic Sweden of today” (p. 108).

Why is mobility so limited, according to Clark? Our social and economic prospects are governed, overwhelmingly, by “underlying social capabilities,” courtesy of our families. And why are some families blessed with abundant “social capabilities,” while others must make do with less...