Your ancestry may be your destiny
Margaret Wente
A deeply challenging new book by economic historian Gregory Clark (The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility) argues (…) that most people’s outcomes can be predicted at conception. To an alarming degree, your destiny is determined by your ancestors.
You do not want to hear this. I do not want to hear this. Nobody wants to hear this. Prof. Clark’s findings challenge everything we believe about fairness, equality and social mobility. After all, inequality doesn’t matter so much if social mobility is high. If you can be born in a log house and wind up in the White House, then the world is in some sense fair. We like to think that even though outcomes are unequal, most people have a more or less equal shot. We like to think that even though the advantages conferred by wealth and privilege are real, they don’t last long. But they do.
Prof. Clark’s research idea was to track social status through surnames, which can be followed over a long period of time through the historical records. Studying surnames is a good way to gauge the changing status of a group, rather than of individuals, and gives us a more accurate picture of true mobility. “Conventional estimates imply that social mobility is rapid and pervasive,” he writes. But he found that social advantage typically endures for 300 years – 10 to 15 generations. His book is full of startling examples. For instance, you’re twice as likely to be listed in the American Medical Association’s Directory of Physiciansif you had a family member graduate from an Ivy League college between 1650 and 1850.
Why is social status so persistent? Prof. Clark’s answer is that successful families are very good at transmitting what he calls “social competence” – a mix of measurable characteristics that include education, occupation, wealth and longevity. You can argue whether the underlying factors that confer social competence are cultural or genetic, but it doesn’t really matter. “Social status is inherited as strongly as any biological trait,” he argues.
