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What’s in your last name? What do surnames reveal about social mobility?

A colourised version of Jimmy Sime’s ‘Toffs and Toughs’, showing five English boys: two dressed in school uniform, including waistcoat, top hat and walking stick; and three nearby wearing the civilian clothes of pre-war working-class youth.

Americans are proud to live in the “land of opportunity.” Rags-to-riches stories continue to attract attention because they embody the idea that people can break free from social constraints and class systems. People hope that everyone, no matter where they come from, can achieve the American Dream through initiative and hard work.

But great wealth can depend on something as simple as a name. Surnames He examined academic research to see how a person’s name determines his or her social status and ability to succeed.

Many economists have investigated intergenerational social mobility from different perspectives.

World Bank researcher Roy van der Weide and a team of economists examined social mobility in terms of educational attainment as the key to future success. They found that people in developing countries do not have the same educational opportunities as those in high-income countries, and therefore have less opportunity to move into different social strata.

Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development examined social mobility through the lens of the COVID-19 pandemic and found that economically disadvantaged people are having trouble accessing educational resources. The improvement in inflation and employment also created further hardship, hindering the advancement of low-income workers.

Most of these findings are no surprise, but economist Gregory Clark’s research, published in his book “The Son Also Rises,” is notable because it looks at something people are born into (a surname) rather than a situation they are born into. . Clark argues that major changes in social mobility in America and elsewhere are much lower than generally believed, disproving the idea that most people in America can self-initiate their path to success.

Surnames

Surnames around the world determine potential for social mobility

A graph showing surname-based analysis showing that societies are less socially mobile than generally perceived.

Clark looked at centuries of census and genealogical data; this allowed him to see how slowly it could take for people to progress through social layers.

For example, he looked at unusual surnames in England dating back to the Norman invasion that began in 1066. Clark, who traced these surnames according to the school they attended and their profession, surprisingly found I discovered little change. in social mobility – not just for a few generations, but over the last 1000 years.

Clark found that elites often remained elite; for example, Names similar to Norman are still overrepresented In Oxford and Cambridge, even though the admission criteria for these schools have become more standardized and accessible to a larger portion of the population. Clark found that rich people’s surnames also make their descendants more likely to become rich, live longer, and choose to become doctors or lawyers.

While this is not surprising in a historically rigid society like the United Kingdom, Clark found similar results when he applied it to other countries. In Sweden, there are numerous government assistance programs to help low-income families move to higher social levels. However, Clark points out that Swedes with elite status surnames continued this situation continuously In the form of wealth, education and jobs for 200 years.

Even communist countries like China have surprisingly low rates of social mobility. While the 1949 revolution caused some social mobilization in the country by pushing out the ruling elite class, the Communist party leadership continued the cycle in a similar way by becoming the new elite.

Despite the rose-tinted spectacles of the American Dream, the United States ranks in the middle when it comes to social mobility. Clark took the approach of looking at names by ethnicity in the United States, a country of immigrants, suggesting that racial disparities have persisted for longer than initially thought.

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But other factors also increase opportunities for social mobility

Color image of the Kennedy family with teenage JFK in the center posing for a portrait in Hyannis, Massachusetts.

Other researchers have used different factors to investigate social mobility rates between generations. A 2019 study by Xi Song of the University of Pennsylvania and other collaborators shows that: Social mobility was increasing before World War IIIndustrialization triggered change, as new types of high-paying manufacturing jobs drew workers from farms to cities. But for those born after 1940, social mobility has not changed much over the generations.

Raj Chetty and other researchers from Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley found: Geography plays an important role The possibility of achieving upward mobility in the U.S. Their 2014 paper, which examined decades of data on millions of U.S. residents, found that different parts of the country have greater disparities depending on the level of economic opportunity. Those in the Southeastern United States have less chance of achieving higher social mobility than those in the Western Mountains. In Charlotte, North Carolina, a person’s chance of moving from the bottom income bracket to the top bracket was 4.4%, while in San Jose, the chance of making that jump was almost 13%. When examining surnames, researchers found a smaller relationship between surnames and social mobility than Clark did.

If a surname plays a key role in determining a person’s social status at birth, it is more difficult to change the status quo. A. Surname research in Modena, one of Italy’s local newspapersThe research, published in the 2024 issue of the journal Social Indicators Research, found that those with higher social status make news more frequently and have more social influence. In the USA, this is clearly seen in the political sphere, where family dynasties such as the Kennedys and Bushes maintained high social status for several generations.

While a person’s name is an indicator of social status, governments can play a role in increasing the social mobility of those not born into the right family. The Brookings Institute found the following in research published in 2022: Opportunity for upward wealth mobility declines with ageTherefore, policies should consider how to create greater upward mobility throughout a person’s life. Programs to improve homeownership rates, encourage savings, and encourage retirement planning can help people build wealth that will lift them up, regardless of their family origins.

Story editing by Carren Jao. Additional editing by Kelly Glass. Copy editing by Kristen Wegrzyn.

this story originally appeared Surnames Produced and distributed in partnership with Stacker Studio.