So, What Do Your Parents Do? And Your Great-Grandparents?

Income mobility is a problem for everyone. Most people, in most countries, dream of a world where birth does not limit your status in society. No country has achieved this happy end, though some of them do better than others. Income mobility statistics are created, worried over, analyzed for some sign of possible cures. A new paper out of Sweden suggests that we should perhaps be worrying even more than we do, and that the cures may be harder to come by than we thought.

Most income mobility research examines how tightly people's incomes are linked to those of their parents. In "The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility," Gregory Clark suggested that this approach was too limited. When he looked at surnames over centuries rather than years, he found that socio-economic status was incredibly persistent, with the great-great grandchildren of the elites doing markedly better than those of humbler origins. His work found that it took 10-15 generations to erase the legacy of prior prosperity.