This research project will use information on the distribution of surnames in England and the USA to answer the question "Do we live in a world of long run equality of opportunity?" To answer this question we need to be able to trace the fortunes of the descendants of the rich and poor over many generations, and surnames supply this measure.
The project will first measure long run economic and social mobility in England from 1236 to 2009, using three methods: common surnames (1250-2009), rare surnames (1559-2009), and the linking of testators with rare surnames with their grandchildren, great grandchildren and even more remote descendants (1450-2009). Common surnames, for example, when formed in the middle ages around 1300 often signified upper or lower class status. What was the later wealth and social status of the descendants of these original social classes? The project thus will test whether there were ever persistent social classes in England. It will also measure the speed of regression to the mean in each era. Did social mobility increase with the arrival first of the Industrial Revolution? Was it further increased in the nineteenth century by universal public education?
The preliminary indications are that all through history England displayed a high degree of economic and social mobility, with no groups persistently staying above or below average. Common surnames like ?Smith,? for example, had lost all information on social status by 1650. The rate of social mobility may have increased between the medieval and the modern world, but this is not obvious from the preliminary data.
Even medieval England with its complete long run mobility thus differs from the modern USA, where groups such as Black Americans have remained persistently below average income even in the last 40 years, and others such as Jewish Americans have remained persistently above average incomes. What features of England, even before modern education and taxation systems, allowed for such complete long run social mobility? And why have they not been found in the modern US?
This project developed a new way of measuring intergenerational social mobility rates using information on the status content of surnames and the change of that content over generations. The advantage of this method is that it can be used to estimate social mobility across multiple generations when the precise family links of people are unknown. In the case of England, for example, as many as 30 generations can be observed. But a second advantage is that the surname estimates reveal the underlying rate of social mobility that governs mobility over multiple generations, and that also matters when we consider the mobility of social groups. The surname estimates show that this underlying rate of social mobility is much slower than conventional estimates of social mobility would suggest. The descendants of advantaged social groups in England, for example, in 1800 still show higher social status than the average person in 2012. While conventional estimates suggest that the intergenerational correlation of measures of status such as earnings is in the order 0.2-0.6, the surname estimates suggest that the underlying correlation of overall social status is in the order of 0.7-0.8. Also there is no sign that the great institutional changes of the twentith century - universal public education and the emancipation of women - have led to any increase in social mobility rates. Social outcomes are largely determined by the families people are born into with little or no ability of public policy to change these outcomes.
