"Winner of 2015 Gyorgy Ranki Prize, Economic History Association" "Honorable Mention for the 2015 PROSE Award in Economics, Association of American Publishers" "One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2014" "One of Vox's "Best Books We Read in 2014"" Gregory Clark is professor of economics at the University of California, Davis.
A surprising look at how ancestry still determines social outcomes
How much of our fate is tied to the status of our parents and grandparents? How much does it influence our children? More than we wish to believe. While it has been argued that rigid class structures have eroded in favor of greater social equality, The Son Also Rises proves that movement on the social ladder has changed little over eight centuries. Using a novel technique-tracking family names over generations to measure social mobility across countries and periods-renowned economic historian Gregory Clark reveals that mobility rates are lower than conventionally estimated, do not vary across societies, and are resistant to social policies.
Clark examines and compares surnames in such diverse cases as modern Sweden and Qing Dynasty China. He demonstrates how fate is determined by ancestry and that almost all societies have similarly low social mobility rates. Challenging popular assumptions about mobility and revealing the deeply entrenched force of inherited advantage, The Son Also Rises is sure to prompt intense debate for years to come. "The Son Also Rises . . . suggests that dramatic social mobility has always been the exception rather than the rule. Clark examines a host of societies over the past seven hundred years and finds that the makeup of a given country's economic élite has remained surprisingly stable."---James Surowiecki, New Yorker "An epic feat of data crunching and collaborative grind. . . . Mr. Clark has just disrupted our complacent idea of a socially mobile, democratically fluid society."---Trevor Butterworth, Wall Street Journal "Audacious."---Barbara Kiser, Nature "[A]n important book, and anybody at all interested in inequality and the kind of society we have should read it."---Diane Coyle, Enlightened Economist "The Son Also Rises. . . . That is the new Greg Clark book and yes it is an event and yes you should buy it."---Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution "Startling. . . . Clark proposes a new way to measure mobility across nations and over time. He tracks the persistence of rare surnames at different points on the socio-economic scale. The information he gathers is absorbing in its own right, quite aside from its implications."---Clive Crook, Bloomberg View "Clark casts his net wider. He looks at mobility not across one or two generations, but across many. And he shows by focusing on surnames--last names--how families overrepresented in elite institutions remain that way, though to diminishing degrees, not just for a few generations but over centuries."---Michael Barone, Washington Examiner "Deeply challenging."---Margaret Wente, Globe & Mail "Who should you marry if you want to win at the game of life? Gregory Clark . . . offers some answers in his fascinating new book, The Son Also Rises."---Eric Kaufmann, Literary Review "This intriguing book measures social mobility in a novel way, by tracing unusual surnames over several generations in nine different countries, focusing on intergenerational changes in education, wealth, and social status as indicated by occupation." "No doubt this book will be as controversial as its thesis is thought-provoking." "Gregory Clark's analysis of intergenerational mobility signals a marked shift in the way economists think about social mobility."---Andrew Leigh, Sydney Morning Herald "The thesis of The Son Also Rises is, fundamentally, that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Ingeniously, Clark and his team of researchers look at the persistence of socioeconomic status through the lens of surnames in more than 20 societies."---Tim Sullivan, Harvard Bus
