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Social class is genetic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Son_Also_Rises_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Son_Also_Rises_(book) "The book follows rela
by mikert89 1y ago
Social class is genetic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Son_Also_Rises_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Son_Also_Rises_(book)
"The book follows relatively successful and unsuccessful extended families through the centuries in England, the United States, Sweden, India, China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and Chile. Clark uses an innovative technique of following families by seeing whether or not rare surnames kept turning up in university enrollment records, registers of physicians, lists of members of parliament, and other similar contemporary historical registers. Clark finds that the persistence of high or low social status is greater than would be expected from the generally accepted correlations of income between parents and children, conflicting with virtually all measures of social mobility previously developed by other researchers, which Clark claims are flawed. According to Clark, social mobility proceeds at a similar rate in all of the societies and in all the periods of history studied – with the exceptions of social groups with higher endogamy (tendency to marry within the same group), who experience higher social persistence and therefore even lower social mobility.[1][2]"
- keiferski 1y agoI don’t agree with the author’s/your use of genetic here, which to me implies that it is somehow embedded within the individual itself, and would have the same results in any scenario. It seems just as likely, more likely, that nepotism and legacy networks are responsible for the continuation of certain families maintaining their social class.
- dash2 1y agoThat's an obvious alternative hypothesis, but Greg Clark has done quite a lot to support the genetic hypothesis, though never directly with genetic data IIRC.
- keiferski 1y agoI haven’t read the book so I am not familiar with his specific argument. However he’s an economist, not a geneticist. And the description of the book on Amazon focuses on last names and ancestry, not genetics. https://www.amazon.com/Son-Also-Rises-Surnames-Princeton/dp/0691168377 https://www.amazon.com/Son-Also-Rises-Surnames-Princeton/dp/... This book looks to me like it’s arguing that social policies don’t do much to affect familial networks, not that it’s arguing that the elites all have magical genes that keep them on top.
- dash2 1y agoI have read the book, and also several of his other papers :-)
- keiferski 1y agoOkay, in that case can you give a summary of why the data doesn’t show family networks and weak wealth redistribution policies aren’t the reason for why certain family names stay in elite classes?
- pcrh 1y agoFamily names are not as strongly correlated with genetics as you might be assuming. Consider that for each generation the genetics of the family founder are diluted by 50% (assuming that consanguineous relations are excluded). So after 5 generations or so, only ~3% of the heirs' DNA is specific to the family founder. So, the fact that names per se better predict outcomes than DNA very strongly points to social factors as the major determinants.
- dash2 1y agoUnless there's very strong assortative mating...
- pcrh 1y agoWouldn't assortative mating that is sufficiently strong to overcome the 50% dilution per generation amount to consanguinous mating?
- dash2 1y agoNot necessarily. You only have to overcome the dilution on specific dimensions. Suppose everyone mates only on intelligence, and marries a person of exactly equal genetic intelligence to themselves. Then there's no dilution per generation on intelligence, though there is on e.g. height.