Concerning Gregory Clark’s findings of the absence of high multi-generational mobility, a commenter writes,
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.
One thing we know is that there is high variance in outcomes across siblings. Back when people had many children, it may have been the case that if you were well off it was very likely that at least one of your grandchildren would be well off, but not so likely that every one of your grandchildren would be well off. With people having fewer children, either multigenerational mobility will go up or other forces (such as stronger assortative mating) will offset what otherwise would be an increase in random variation across generations.
I don’t see the whole chain of argument. Ok, so one of the grandchildren ends up well off, but why does that show up in the data rather than the grandchildren who don’t? Is it that the surname of the richer indviduals have survive long enough to stay in the dataset because they (and the Y chromosme the travel with) have a Darwinian advantage?
good point. I need a more complete story, such as weaker children of the well off having fewer offspring
Thanks for the reply, Arnold.
Yes, that makes sense, especially in light of A Farewell to Alms, which posited significant downward social mobility for the children of the upper class, and not just due to things like primogeniture. But when you factor in things like female hypergamy, men’s penchant for favoring looks over brains, as well as legal changes like the institution of estate taxes, abolition of aristocratic privileges, economic changes like declining profits in agriculture, I still come out a skeptic. Seems like there is too much cultural and historical variation for me to buy the idea that social mobility is essentially stable across such long periods of time.
But I agree that with people marrying later, assortative mating is likely intensifying.
“But I agree that with people marrying later, assortative mating is likely intensifying.”
Later marriage is, I think, a fruit of the fact that people have so much more choice in mate selection now so I wonder if it’s less a cause than effect. The son (or daughter) of the small town layer or doctor doesn’t just take what he/she can get or what the parents arrange. He/she moves to a large city, goes to college, meets people through social media who share interests (which proxy for other shared traits) etc. Meanwhile, birth control in its various forms becomes widespread, and sex that will never have to do with marriage gains social acceptance. I’m aggregating trends that took generations to take hold, but you get the idea. Then, fifty, sixty years on smart people increasingly cluster with other smart people and their ability to be choosy grows with the technology.
Lots of cognoscenti talk about assortative mating these days, but my guess is, if anything, it’s impact is under-not-overrated.
Gregory Clark’s line of thought has the potential to create a minor existential crisis among the intelligentsia.
I imagine that almost all those who read Clark’s book, or a summary of its argument, and agree with the conclusion Clark draws–people don’t deserve higher incomes than others because relative success is largely a matter of fate–believe that, in the case of their own children, their success depends to a significant extent on their (the childrens’) own efforts, in the kind of way we tend to assume when we think that people deserve what they earn. At least they seem to raise their children as if they thought this. I wonder how one would reconcile these beliefs.
the explanation might be that the propensity to undertake effort is highly heritable. This makes the philosophical issues somewhat hard to disentangle.
Why do people seem to assume you don’t deserve what you have if it is in your genes?
This is a good point, and I think one made by Will Wilkinson some time back. It’s a non-sequiter to assume that because one doesn’t DESERVE something due to luck, somebody else obviously does.