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Comment by vixen99 | Hacker News Reader

Not to forget the French (Norman) invasion and complete takeover of the British (Anglo Saxons) by William in 1066.

The effects of that invasion are still with us as pointed out by Gregory Clark. Analysis of Norman Surnames and their predominance in elite families in Britain today, has shown that "Rich families stay rich and poor families stay poor, according to a new study that finds that English people whose ancestors were elite in the 1100s are still likely part of the upper crust today. The study echoes work in other countries that has found that social status budges little over generations, even in the face of massive social changes"

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Well I suppose one could say we call the analogue of reparations the welfare state at which point that prospect doesn’t sound quite so ludicrous after all.

Be honest, that's in a culture that holds the Nobility as a different kind of human being above everyone else. This worshipful attitude is a huge factor, not just economics.

And not all the rich, stay rich. That's a mainstay for every British comedy ever. But the ones who do stay rich, are very often those that are held in higher regard than the 'common folk'.

Clark finds this pattern in most societies, IIRC Sweden and China have (in his data) almost identical rates of status persistence. It's not a quirk of English manners.

What varies more is the degree to which ordinary people today descend from the nobility in (say) 1100. In some societies they had many more surviving children than average, e.g. it's easy for them to double every generation, within a basically static total population, implying that their offspring make up a high proportion of people after a few centuries. But in other societies, they did not.

His books are pretty readable, BTW, interesting data.

Interesting choice - those two societies also have 1000 years of respect for nobility? It seems to be a strong factor then.

I don't know about respect. The data is on persistence of status. They can do this in many countries, those are just two I remember (besides England).

Direct records of ancestry are too scattered to piece together long timescales. What he (and collaborators) do is to find very rare surnames, in records at some distant time (e.g. Oxford graduation in 1600, high-status, or common criminals executed then, low-status) and then trace look for the same name in later data (e.g. Victorian wills, or today's tax data). Rare names give you a fairly targeted marker. One which the carriers are often unaware of.

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