Social Mobility

Clark doesn’t just find that social mobility in the United States is overstated, he finds that there is little social mobility, in general, across time and geography. In England, Sweden, India, Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Chile, from the present to the medieval period, he was hard-pressed to find any intergenerational mobility correlations greater than .75. He even dares to call it a “social law,” and a “universal constant.” [...] In 1626, the Swedes recorded an official list of their noble families. [...] The average taxable income of people with noble names today is about 44% higher than that of people with a common surname such as Andersson. [...] 
If this effect can be observed in one of the most equal Western welfare states, then it likely holds in other countries as well. You should read the whole book if you’re interested in the topic, but if you’re not, I can just tell you: This is what Clark finds from Chile to India to Japan to Medieval England. [...] [E]lite Chinese families before the Communist revolution were still more likely to be elite 50 years after the revolution. That was an all-encompassing totalitarian revolution explicitly designed to overturn inequality.
-- Justin MurphyThe Social Mobility Illusion (otherlife.co)
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* Heritability; Social; Mobility; Hierarchy; Status
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