Measuring social mobility rates in earlier and less-documented societies

Gregory Clark

No wp-2020-28, WIDER Working Paper Series from World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER)

Abstract: In societies where surnames are inherited from parents, we can use these names to estimate rates of intergenerational mobility. This paper explains how to make such estimates, and illustrates their use in pre-industrial England and modern Chile and India. These surname estimates have the advantage that they require much less data than traditional parent-child estimates. They are also more robust to errors in status data. Thus, they can be used to estimate social mobility rates in early societies such as England 1300-1800, or in less-developed societies now.

Keywords: Intergenerational Mobility; Long-run mobility; Underlying mobility; Group-level mobility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo and nep-his
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