The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility

For nearly a hundred years, and probably longer, a popular take on social class and wealth embraced the trope “The rich get rich and the poor get poorer. ”1 In response to the wide variation in economic status largely believed to be the result of urbanization and industrialization, twentieth-century reformers and activists worked, lobbied, marched, and legislated to close the gap between the haves and the have-nots. Acting on the premise that a rising tide raises all ships, private philanthropy and all levels of government assessed needs and conceptualized new institutional providers in support of women and children. A multitude of programs focused on education, healthcare, social services, and housing reform to address inequality of income. Gregory Clark, professor of economics at the University of California, Davis, upends the notion that interventions such as these can effect substantive change in his most recent book, The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility. In a fascinating and extraordinary use of historical data, Clark and his 11 collaborators, including Neil Cummins, Yu Hao, and Daniel Diaz, creatively correlate surnames with wealth, educational attainment, and class in Europe, Asia, and North and South America. His focus encompasses historic periods ranging from the eleventh-century Norman invasion of England to the 300-year Qing (Manchu) dynasty in China (1644–1912). In contrast to the short-term, two-generation study of wealth and class typically employed by sociologists, Clark utilizes the longue dureé approach of the French Annales School with a multiple-generational analysis of wealth and some studies lasting up to 17 generations. For readers who are neither statisticians, economists, nor sociologists, the Introduction to The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility provides the context for understanding the issue of economics and social mobility in the ruling and underclasses. The chapters that follow are neatly divided into three sections: Social Mobility by Time and Place, Testing the Laws of Mobility, and The Good Society. This three-part structure details the studies and the findings, presents and explains Clark’s theory of social mobility, and then explores the anomalies and future implications for social policy. Two of the three appendices detail how to utilize data to examine multiple-generational mobility, derive rates of persistence and evaluate surname frequencies. The third appendix is a guide to teasing out the status of your own surname lineage. The book concludes with complete sources for the data used in the figures and tables, followed by an extensive reference section and index. While social competence is generally understood to be a multidimensional concept that includes social, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral skills, Clark argues that measures of education, wealth, and income are a viable proxy for social competence. He further argues that his measures of social competence are assets more powerful than any social intervention, cultural shift, or economic opportunity (108–113). Clark contends that interventions which promote equal opportunity have not resulted in greater equality, and a better and more democratic approach might be a focus on greater equality of condition. While some may quarrel with his explanation of how nature versus nurture plays a role in social mobility, the argument that creating greater equality is a better path to social mobility than traditional institutional interventions should provoke interesting discussions. The author carefully delineates his use of data in each chapter to show how he conceived