He writes (concerning China),
the descendants of the pre-revolution elites crop up unexpectedly frequently among high government officials, university professors, and students at elite universities.
Also,
Marriage is highly assortative in all societies. Even in 19th century England, where women had no formal educational status and little control of wealth, women married men who were very like their fathers or brothers in wealth and education.
This is from an article a couple of weeks ago that I missed. Thanks to Jason Collins for the pointer.
“Marriage is highly assortative in all societies.”
The United States for most of its history might have been an exception to this. Men from poor backgrounds could move up and marry daughters of the elite (such as Abe Lincoln marrying Mary Todd) and, when women moved into the work force, elite men often married their female subordinates (doctors marrying nurses, lawyers marrying secretaries, etc.). It seems that we’re now back to assortative mating, however.
Some random thoughts on the above:
Wow what is driving it money, privilege, a head start or maybe genetic factors like IQ, diligence, ambition? Some combination?
The rich people that I know seem to have a mix of children some high achievers and some low so the turnover seems like it in not insignificant.
I have noticed more and more professional athletes whose parents were also professional athletes. The 2 consecutive years that UF won the basketball NCAA 4 out their 5 starters were children of professional athletes. Still most are not the children of professional athletes.
In sport blacks have come from no where to dominance of the 2 most popular sports.
There are many drivers to success. Good looks for models, actors and even sales people and executives. Ambition in business, brains in academics and science, prudence and saving in wealth accumulation, athletic ability in sports. Musical ability in entertainment. Personality and like ability in politics and sales.
It seems to me that if you look at successful people in any of these areas more that half of the very successful come from modest beginnings.
What seems to be more rare is people who go from the bottom to the top. It seems like more go from the top to the bottom (some genius might have a downs or schizophrenic child (I knew a brilliant professor a leader in his filed whose schizophrenic son could never hold a job). Some children of the rich end up as drug addicts.
I doubt that the poor children I see running around Chinese restaurants where their parents work for less that minimum wage are doomed to poverty.
It all seems very mysterious to me.
I still can’t believe things are quite as static as he makes them out to be, but I don’t know enough to dispute any of his specific findings. The model of human social behavior I carry around in my brain just doesn’t match the one he presents.