
The Son Also Rises
Surnames and the History of Social Mobility
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
3 months free
Buy for $19.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Jonathan Todd Ross
-
By:
-
Gregory Clark
How much of our fate is tied to the status of our parents and grandparents? How much does this 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. The good news is that these patterns are driven by strong inheritance of abilities and lineage does not beget unwarranted advantage. The bad news is that much of our fate is predictable from lineage. Clark argues that since a greater part of our place in the world is predetermined, we must avoid creating winner-take-all societies.
Clark examines and compares surnames in such diverse cases as modern Sweden, 14th-century England, and Qing Dynasty China. He demonstrates how fate is determined by ancestry and that almost all societies - as different as the modern United States, Communist China, and modern Japan - have similarly low social mobility rates. These figures are impervious to institutions, and it takes hundreds of years for descendants to shake off the advantages and disadvantages of their ancestors. For these reasons, Clark contends that societies should act to limit the disparities in rewards between those of high and low social rank.
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.
Download the accompanying reference guide.©2014 Princeton University Press (P)2014 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...




















People who viewed this also viewed...

Was almost close to reading the book
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
It’s mostly genetics
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Bit same-y
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
For one, we know that bit averages persist longer than single bit persistence in random bit collections, as a mathematical result. That simple statistical result explains much of the results in this book, and it has nothing to do with genes. But Greg insists that there are no heritable additive processes in the environment and this incorrect belief steers him to constantly downplay the very real familial process we have measured that transfer privilege between generations. And at one point he waxes poetically about how if there were any such process, it would be countered by giving resources like money to disadvantaged, not once considering that the transfer may be of some nonmonetary sort.
It was just a very disappointing read as one with a deep interest in the field, as it just seemed really poor scholarism. Seeing him regularly bring up Charles Murray was horrifying, and then that thing he did where he kept trying to couch his genetic hypothesis in cautious language (despite then using it in later reasoning like “it couldn’t be X because genes”) and then exploding in the last chapter with a genes-genetic-innate-unchangeable catharsis where he lets his whole supremacist freak flag fly was just sad. Why do these people have to try to pretend so hard, spreading unscientific and unethical implications?
Such a poorly reasoned work
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.