Surnames offer depressing clues to extent of social mobility over generations | Hacker News Reader

Surnames offer depressing clues to extent of social mobility over generations

economist.com

85 pointsconfluence78 comments

This is a very interesting article. Particularly commendable is the complete listing of the source papers, so that readers can delve more deeply into the material.

I wonder, however, whether the surname analysis took into account the effects of the changes in surname frequency over time -- as I recall, it was Galton who investigated statistically how the surname distributions change with time, and the point is that the number of unique surnames goes down over time, because each child usually has only one of their parents' surnames. So it's not clear to me that we would expect the wealth distribution of uncommon surnames to become more equal over time. Maybe that would explain the disparity between the surname analysis and other measures of social mobility?

It's amazing how this works, I've been Paying some attention to this stuff for some time, and it is mostly like that. I've observed 3rd generation families of wealthy landlords and/or bankers (the ones that made the fortune). It's just anecdotal, but the ones that put more effort and attention on education and hardwork (not having access to the money till they are out of the university and have proved their capabilities) are the ones able to mainatain or increase the wealth of the family. On the other hand, those that just surf their lives through the existing money, are able to put themselves down the ladder at surprising speed (like 15 years once they get access to the principal of the money) their sons will be low middle class (or mileuristas as we say in Spain). All this is obvious of course, but It's interesting to follow this people's evolution. The ones loosing it don't have a clue of what's happening to them.

Edit: some typos and sentences.

Couldn't agree more on education. Putting a strong emphasis on educating your children to themselves be successful must surely be a strong success factor for them - and something they're likely to do in turn for their own children. Conversely, neglecting your children's education is also likely to be passed on, and also likely to have significant effect.

By "education" I don't just mean what happens at school - most school systems provide only the thinnest veneer of "education", which includes many things not taught at school, like critical thinking, social skills, being widely read, broad general knowledge, the habit of trying to solve problems yourself, and many other features of people in "elite" positions.

For example, one might notice the strange preponderance of Jewish people in those "elite" positions, both academic and artistic and commercial and political. This is perhaps more easily understood when you know that the Jewish culture places enormous focus on educating the next generation and on critical thinking, probably because of thousands of years of history where Jews might be chased out of their homes by mobs with pitchforks and torches, and leave with nothing but what was in their heads. In that context, social mobility is total: you rise or fall to the level of what you can carry inside your skull.

"This is perhaps more easily understood when you know that the Jewish culture places enormous focus on educating the next generation and on critical thinking"

Or maybe it is even better understood in terms of genetic differences: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence.

That makes no sense. How could one group possibly slowly evolve over a great period of time to be any different than anyone else?

What exactly do you think "makes no sense"? That two groups could evolve different traits over time? If so, how would you explain differences in skin color between West Africans and Northern Europeans? Or differences in lactose tolerance between different ethnic groups [1]?

[1] http://www.foodreactions.org/intolerance/lactose/prevalence....

Hilariously, I think he is just high. Read through his other posts.

Because I live in a western liberal democracy and have been indoctrinated to believe that differences between cultures have no qualitative bearing, they are merely choices among equal values, and as such I cannot possibly comprehend such blatant facts.

Please tell me you knew I was being sarcastic...

Well, I was going to add "EDIT: Or are you just being sarcastic?". Twice. But I didn't. After all, it's Hacker News.

Bravo, you have just disproved evolution.

Which seems like the result of generations of selective pressure exerted by a culture that values education and critical thinking.

"Culture" is an empty explanation. The question is: were your odds of getting married and having children as a Medieval Ashkenazi Jew better if you were smarter?

I'm descended from these people and I don't know.

Over that time period is it more likely to be selective pressure or a founder effect?

A founder effect doesn't require continuous selective pressure, it just requires a population with a small group of founders from whom the entire population is descended. For instance, a group that splits off from a larger group, or passes through a population bottleneck. In this situation a set of genes -- inherited from the founder who is the common ancestor of the entire population -- can very rapidly become dominant in a population, not because they are beneficial but because there are no alternatives.

So in other words, if there is an Ashakenzi 'smart gene' it may not be a matter of the selective pressures of the Jewish condition over the last few hundred years, it might just be a matter of descending from a single very smart person.

That could be, but with a founder effect in a population whose European contribution came from a small number of females, we then have to expect either:

* The intelligence came from the European converted-in founder females. In which case, how come we don't see similar intelligence averages in similar European populations?

* Or, the intelligence came from the male Jewish founders. In which case, how come we don't see similar intelligence averages in other Jewish populations?

Both questions can, of course, be accompanied by, "OR DO WE!?!?!?! dun dun duuuun".

The founder effect gives two possible answers:

1. The gene or gene suite originated with one of the founders. Novel mutation or assemblage of uncommon preexisting mutations.

2. The proposed smart gene is not adaptive. Being smart is cool, but only one facet of fitness. The smart gene would then be weeded out of the larger population through selection pressure, but survive in the smaller population through the founder effect.

Interesting that Emmy Noether was Ashkenazi, I knew of Einstein and Bernstein. This theory has been around for a while, not sure what to make of it given what we know now about IQ.

It isn't even proven that the difference is genetic. There should be a study where they take Jewish kids that are raised in non-jewish families and look for the difference, then they should take non-jewish kids who were raised in a jewish families as jews and look for difference, even then it would not prove. For better measure they should take identical twins both jewish and non-jewish where one of the twin is raised as a jew and other as not jew. Even then they should take into account which environment they were in during prenatal period, jewish or non-jewish. Since these strict requirements are unrealistic to ever be achieved I view those types of arguments as more speculations than anything else. It is not a secret that even many scientists often fail to understand statistical data correctly, and in these kind of studies in particular there may even be certain motivation to project data at a certain "angle" to look it more like you want it to look.

Mental exercise: 1. Take the text replace Ashkenazi Jew with Arian 2. Trust me they (the nazis) had they scientists to proof exactly the same but with Arians.

And see how you kidnap "science" in the same of ideology. That's actually pretty ugly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum

I doubt it. Culture is key. Being in the right place at the right time, having a network of folks interested in your welfare, etc is key.

Think of it this way -- how many smart people from school or childhood do you know who didn't amount to much, despite the raw ability to achieve. Now think about your work life -- how many times have worked for or witnessed a blithering idiot in charge of thing at your job or a customers org?

Culture matters.

Well to be cynical - if most people are blithering idiots and most people don't amount to much, it could be true that most smart people don't amount to much and most people in charge are idiots while still true that being smart makes you much more likely to be in charge :o)

Completely agree, also I would add that there is a factor that it's very important and I've recently come to learn. Is the example one gives to his sons (I am father of two). If you behave giving importance to money and expending, no matter what you try to teach them, they are going to value wasting money. It applies to all the parts of personality. In a way when they are very small (between 1 and 7 more or less) they mostly try to be your clon, and if you say one thing and act the oposite, they'll notice it. I'm trying to improve myself faster than ever before, just because of that

They don't seem to account for non-socioeconomic factors like genetics and nurturing.

I'm not saying aristocrats are a master race, just that if your ancestors won competitions, you may have inherited whatever genetic factors helped them. These might include abilities for collaboration, "reading" other people, intelligence... and perhaps competitiveness, controlled aggression and ruthlessness.

Nurture would include very basic care of infants (e.g. talking to them), and general ways of thinking and attitudes. It's easier to be "successful" if you reach your basic potential by having your developmental needs met. You'll tend to raise your children the same (partly because you've experienced it, partly through oral tradition passed on from grandparents).

NB: I'm not saying "social success" is necessarily a good thing, nor that the factors leading to it necessarily make a better world, just noting what explains the data. Of course, maybe this article is only measuring social mobility, and not claiming social position as complete causation.

The article did suggest upbringing as a possible cause. If genetics were that big of a factor wouldn't we see the two groups dividing over time? Instead the article says that the odds of surnames having the same economic value are the same after 300 to 500 years. I assume all of the genetic traits you listed are more fluid than that.

I'm not clear which two "groups" you mean, or that they'd divide.

There is a class divide for human "breeding", with expressions like "marrying below" etc. But more importantly, people marry people they meet, who tend to be in their social group. So I guess this does come down to a class "race".

Aside: I expect specific surnames having the same economic value over time is a consequence of that class strata having the same value over time. i.e. it's the class, not the specific lineage. But I agree that if was due to the lineage, not the class, it would indicate something else passed on (money, influence etc) other than genetics. Of course, in practice all these factors are present to some degree and hard to disentangle.

Tangent: I think many people take political solace in us all being genetically more-or-less equal - but I think the true source of equality is that we can all think and exchange. We can create things that didn't exist before, solve problems we haven't seen before. I don't mean scientific breakthroughs, just the trivial problem-solving we all do, every day, to function. From making a joke to baking a cake. And we can communicate and trade, to combine our strengths and work together - which benefits each of us more than zero-sum conflict. Who cares who's at the "top"?

This philosophy enables aliens - of all kinds - to be "one of us" instead of "the other".

It's intersting how generations of successfull girls each marrying someone higher in society than her parents wouldn't be traced by this study on surnames.

Successful women tend to keep their surname after marriage. I did. Some consider me mildly successful I guess? It is also because I didn't want to lose my identity I had for 30 years, and I am not the property of my husband.

Many of us are under the impression that this option is relatively recent. That is, historically you didn't have a choice as to whether to keep your name or not. That not the case?

(Or course, I'm curious how much choice anyone had. Many "surnames" that we know are either occupation or city of origin based. Or am I off on that, as well?)

About 20 percent of women in their 60s have different names from their husbands for what it's worth.

I know people like lawyers celebrities and real estate agents have a vested interest in keeping the name they built a reputation around.

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/3287883

I absolutely agree with your position re: property etc, but for how many generations has the practice you're describing (keeping your surname after marriage) been common for, though? One...maybe.

This is a good point but ultimately the important thing is what surname the children get since that is what passed down.

Also this is a random ass guess and backed up by absolutely no data, but I'd bet a sizable amount of money that couples that follow the traditional system of giving everyone the man's name have significantly more children on average than couples who don't, so while your situation may be a factor it is probably currently nothing more than statistically noise.

FWIW, I think you made the right choice. Expecting women to lose the familial history via naming should seem pretty ridiculous in this day and age but it is one of those things that flies under the radar even for a lot of people who are otherwise pretty enlightened about gender issues.

Re: children we don't have any so we haven't had to make a choice about names yet.

Thank you for your kind words.

It is becoming easier and easier to keep separate surnames, I'd guess more and more people will do as you did. It's sad it still clashes in some people's mind and paperworks (ironicly non official agencies most of the time, i.e. my wife kept her name and we can't sign up as married in some bank forms because of a stupid name validation on the fields.

I think using professions ("lawyer") as a proxy for privilege is a little bit problematic. I'm sure I could have been a lawyer, but I never considered it because I'd never met a lawyer. It just wasn't on my radar.

Instead, I became an engineer. My grandfather & father had been engineers, so working in industry, making things was something that I could conceive. I'm sure I didn't suffer financially - I'm better off than all the lawyers I know.

So, to reiterate my point: Using a particular career as a proxy for social mobility is problematic, because life choices can be "sticky" between generations.

Well this is highly anecdotal: none of my parents or grandparents were engineers, yet here I am.

The lawyer practice is structured differently though: there's limited supply of positions at law firms where the money are, and without connected family the chance of fresh grad getting there is slim. Same with banking in Scandinavia: certain banks' departments annual retreats can feel more like family reunions.

Yea my dad a carpenter, mom cleaning lady, grandparents farmers without iron tools until their middle ages, myself saw a computer first time at age 14. Yet Im software engineer and siblings too have master degrees in medicine and philosophy.

Heh. just another small anecdote.

The first comment on the actual article (Econmist) page is thus:

"I suspect that looking at incomes (or genes) rather misses the root of social mobility or lack of it. I think the more major difference is simply cultural."

Maybe you should give credit where credit is due? Perhaps you are being sarcastic but it seems like everyone in your family has noble professions, at least by my standards...

Agree. I'n N'th generation dirt-farmer, so are my siblings. We're 5 computer professionals and one research nurse. All college-educated; all of our children are college-educated. Our upcoming generation will outstrip us all in achievement.

So if culture were the determinant factor, shouldn't all Iowa farm kids be economically rising? Yet few are; in our neighborhood the rest of our generation are working clerical, farm-services or trades. I guess that's upward too, farmer is pretty much the bottom.

However, the fact that nearly none of my generation took up farming has less to do with social mobility than it does with the changes in the farming landscape. All farms are corporate now; the family farm is largely a myth. It takes $1M+ to get into farming.

Maybe its observer bias; my family is certainly not typical. But who's is?

> because life choices can be "sticky" between generations.

Isn't that the very definition of social immobility, though?

"Such competence is potentially heritable and is reinforced by the human tendency to mate with partners of similar traits and ability."

I think this raises a very important question: How far are we willing to go to pursue equality in the modern age? It seems that -- generally -- there is an inevitable tendency of humans to mate with someone of similar "stature" or "capacity". Of course, like any generalization, there are exceptions, but it certainly seems that we each possess a certain amount of "personal capital" which determines our worthiness as a mate. Can we really prevent the good from mating with the good, and the bad from getting stuck with the bad, generally? Is that even a goal worth pursuing? Such presumption seems to be in conflict with nature itself.

It's almost amusing how the modern era is so committed to the science of evolution and yet works so hard to derationalize it!

The main point of equality it to allow a brilliant child of a not so brilliant parents to bring as much value to society as he can. If a very bright kid is born in a farmer's family, we want he/she to become a top member of the society and work on the hard to solve problems, and not become a KFC store manager.

Equality of chance and fluidity is as important to society as it is to individuals. Of course there is a price to pay, for this to be possible it also means that this kid's education will be as far as possible removed from his parents world of view and opinions, and be set under society's values and management, which would be detrimental if the parents could have actually given a better education. But I think it's something we should strive for in balanced proportions.

Do you feel this way from a societal, "consequentialist" point of view, meaning that doing such would necessarily maximize the quality of society on the whole? If so, what if there is an opportunity cost by which such a moral choice stimies your next cancer cure or breakthrough in clean energy?

Or perhaps, instead, do you feel that the overall effect on society is not as important as the individual's "right" to maximize his or her own opportunity? And if so, what about some other individual's right to choose the best available mate?

Or is there a third way?

Thank you for the response.

Although the authors of the article leave a bit of room for attributing a lack of upward mobility to circumstantial disadvantage, you seem to be operating from an almost eugenicist point-of-view with the assumption that position is almost entirely based on inherited ability.

Those studies don't prove anything but I believe that culture and circumstance play a large part in determining mobility.

The funny thing is that in ten or twenty years when artificial super-intelligence arrives, everyone, even rich intellectuals, will be, relatively speaking, mentally challenged, compared to the AIs. Please review this video to get a good idea of what I am talking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_Juh7Xh_70 (Unless we augment our intelligence with implanted technology of some sort.)

I at no point advocated eugenics and I actually find that a bit insulting. I quoted the article directly which stated (as I quote again for the space-cadets among us):

"Such competence is potentially heritable and is reinforced by the human tendency to mate with partners of similar traits and ability."

I simply alluded to (and then later asked) my respondent to what extent he or she is willing to defend equality over an individual's rights. Please do not misrepresent my words. Maybe you should try staying on topic before pointing me to some far-off, yet to be encountered political dilemma? I also pointed out that despite our modern acceptance of evolution, the “enlightened” liberal-democratic west is in absolute cognitive dissonance when it comes to reconciling such theories with the various inequalities that arise between peoples. Perhaps you can enlighten us all with your futuristic wizardry? I'm betting not...

Oh boy, a neo-racist versus a Singulatarian.

Fight, fight, fight, fight!

(Admittedly, I've seen more evidence in favor of AI than in favor of eugenic/dysgenic hypotheses of social inequality.)

> The main point of equality it to allow a brilliant child of a not so brilliant parents to bring as much value to society as he can. If a very bright kid is born in a farmer's family, we want he/she to become a top member of the society and work on the hard to solve problems, and not become a KFC store manager.

As pointed out elsewhere, the problem with that is education. The school system provides a very poor excuse for "education", and if the parents don't supplement that (as well-educated parents likely will), that naturally hampers the bright-child-in-a-poor-family example.

There are exceptions of course, there will always be - but to solve the problem at a larger scale, what must be solved is the education problem. At the moment, 90+% of "education" must still be provided by the parents. Educated people understand that the school system is a parody of education, and so tend to compensate for that. But how can uneducated people understand that and compensate for it?

I agree what is taught in school is very poor and lacking. I hope he current system is a least a gateway for most people: once you start understanding that you need more education, you can look for yourself how to get this education. Then comes to play libraries, grants, online resources etc. Not everyone has a chance to access all the resources he/she needs, but at least middle class and slighty lower classes should have a chance.

To be clear, there will always be a gap between child with clever/well educated parents and other childs, and I don't think we should lower the top level. I just think we need a eay to push people who might be stuck at the bottom level while they could go much higher.

No, we are not going to reconfigure civilization to cater to your fantasies of genetic superiority. Stop trying.

No, I'm not going to let you misinterpret my argument, keep trying. I'm quoting the article which is suggesting that people breed with the best mate they can, inevitably creating inequality. I am asking how we, as a modern society, reconcile this with the goal of equality. It's really a simple question, do you personally think the nature of mate-choosing could lead to inequality over time? Because I do, and I don't think we have any duty as a society to "regulate" how we choose mates to further the goal of equality. That is not to say I am against all attempts an promoting equality, but this specifically is a line in the sand for me (both aesthetically and morally) and I am curious how others feel. The article is practically aghast that such a facet of our nature could cause inequality (among all the other innumerable mutations we incur) and I find it laughable. If you read The Republic by Plato the section on the Kalipolis does a great job of demonstrating why an attempt at perfect equality is so ridiculous: Imagine what would happen to meritocracy if we didn't value with whom we mated and perhaps you will finally get it.

Edit-It's a question of cultural inequality, not genetic, in my mind.

>It's really a simple question, do you personally think the nature of mate-choosing could lead to inequality over time?

Across deep time? No. People don't copy their parents' values or lifestyles over time, so they often wind up breeding differently than their parents did, so genetic recombination occurs and unusual genes flow back into the main population.

I'm not talking about genes. I'm talking about the passing of culture, values, etc... It seems pretty obvious to me that good habits produce more good habits, and bad habits produce more bad habits among family lineage, but no one seems even willing to admit that!

Well, children don't copy their parents.

Children do copy their parents more often than not - sure, they don't always do that, but both habits and values are quite hereditary (though mostly due to nurture, rather than genetics).

Well, nobody is happy with lawyers. Nobody is happy with how 'elite' run their countries. They're failing whatever they usurped for some time now, so yes, I can see us wanting some changes towards equality.

I don't see evidence of this supposed tendency at all. My brothers married women from India, the Philippines. I married a woman from Italy. Why? The exotic nature of 'foreign' women has been lauded in song and literature forever. This flies in the face of the 'tendency to mate with partners of similar traits and ability"

The example English surname they chose, "Micklethwait" is the name of The Economist's editor. Just a little inside joke.

Interesting article, but I was a bit disappointed; I was expecting it to look at names originally derived from occupations, like Baker or Smith. Their approach obviously makes more sense; it's just not as much fun.

Actually yeah, that's what I thought too from the title.

Fun fact: 21% of Koreans have the family name "Kim" (means "gold"):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_name

And in English the most common last name is "Smith". Both of deal with metals is that a coincidence?

In short, yes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_(Korean_name)

In my experience, East Asian surnames tend to indicate the geographic origin of your ancestors, rather than their professions. In the case of the Kims, chances are you had an ancestor in Gimhae. (OTOH, I wouldn't be terribly surprised to learn that Gimhae was once famous for its blacksmiths or goldsmiths.)

it would be interesting to see as a baseline the study of for how many generations descendants of an alpha lion/wolf/gorilla get into the alpha position themselves, if any.

It's precisely the opposite thing though: success through inherent qualities vs via available social context.

the article didn't point to any evidence that some human genetic lines stay at the top for generations due to social context vs. say inherent qualities. The article pointed only to correlation. Such correlation doesn't means causation, especially considering that the social context may be a direct result of inherent qualities (while inherent qualities may be only very indirect result of social context). This is why comparison with baseline where we _think_ inherent qualities play significant role is important.

If, for example, aristocracy like English lords started (or was significantly affected through such a process) as most successful fighters, and didn't have significant gene mix with "lower" classes, when it would be very reasonably to suppose that their inherent qualities is somewhat different.

very often in those species the alpha is the male that is doing most of the mating (although almost never exclusively) so that analysis may not be that meaningful.

"Such competence is potentially heritable and is reinforced by the human tendency to mate with partners of similar traits and ability."

So does this mean that over tens of thousands of years rich people could evolve into a separate race ?

According to Wikipedia, that question doesn't really matter: "race has no taxonomic significance and that all living humans belong to the same species" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_%28human_classification%29

I suppose if some group of people got themselves into their own species, where they could not in fact mate with what we know as "human", it would be a pretty big deal.

Edit-- I quoted the same line... please feel free to respond to my comment below.

'Race' is a dumb concept. We know that there are groups of people that are biologically distinct from others. Not to say that they can't interbreed, merely that there are genetic/phenotypic differences between groups.

Probably the most obvious example is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sickle-cell_disease#Epidemiolog... which is a condition that mostly appears in people with ancestry in regions that expose them to malaria.

Skin color is obviously a biological difference that distinguishes different human populations, it just doesn't correlate with all the stuff we actually care about, for instance intelligence. 'Race' is loosely correlated with some specific biological traits, for instance http://www.webmd.com/hypertension-high-blood-pressure/guide/...

As for hyper-successful people breeding themselves into a sub-group with specific traits, for better or for worse, this is obviously possible http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prognathism#History

Thanks for the links. My area of (amateur) research is "contra-science," and one sub-set I find most interesting is so-called "race." What is called "race' seems actually to be the result of environmental/geographic induced gene expression. My favorite examples is a South African sub-culture that possesses the Cohen gene (Tribe of Isaiah), but looks identical to their neighbors. They have been in South Africa for about 800 years.

No. Crudely put, the rich guys get the pretty girls. This re-averages the IQ. There's an article somewhere; sorry I don't have a link handy. Edit: This re-averages the overall genetic factors.

And pretty girls are healthy ones. Which lets powerful ones avoid degeneration.

This concurs with my belief that the world is fairly deterministic. You can't work your way out of most situations. Your life is pretty much determined at birth. The rest of the stuff is just going through the motions.

Look at the Indian subcontinent for an extreme version of this phenomenon.

"Although American and British mobility rates had converged by the middle of the 20th century, America’s social order was considerably more fluid than Britain’s in the 19th century."

What changed?

Sweden might be very equal but also a country without major wars or revolutions for centuries. Also probably was industrialized for long.

Same for UK, actually.

England, and more recently the UK, has been almost continuously at war for most of its history. Big wars, small wars, but wars.

Most of the history is irrelevant - we're talking a few centuries here. Also, overseas wars don't count.

England has been at war for most of _any_ part of it's history, including the last couple of centuries.

"without major wars or revolutions for centuries" doesn't seem to discount overseas wars.

For what it's worth, the first world war had a major impact on the social life of British people by the simple device of killing a large fraction of the upper class men, and a smaller fraction of working class men. That contributed to the subsequent rise of the middle classes, which may have come to an end recently.

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