Whats in a surname? Success in life might be largely determined by our last names. We already knew inherited traits like height and eye color are predictive of success. But a new study shows our social status appears to be strongly influenced by our surname at birth. An individuals ability to change social status relative to others is known as social mobility. Gregory Clark, an economic historian, has found evidence that social mobility is very limited, even over several generations, and even during massive social changes. His study found English people whose ancestors were elite in the 1100s are quite likely to be upper class today. The same held in numerous other countries, all the way back to the Middle Ages. So our fate is determined not just by our parents but by our greatest of grandparents. Clark concludes the process of changing a surnames social status takes upwards of a dozen generations, which is about 300 to 450 years--significantly longer than past estimates. Clarks finding seems depressing and harsh to me, but he wants us to know that our actions still determine 40% of our fate. That number increases if a family includes high rates of intermarrying and intermating between different social strata. Whew, that bodes well for my offspring as I definitely married up several notches!
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 23:24:59 +0000
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