The South African Civil Society Information Service

The Truth About Social Mobility: Your Surname Still Seems to Matter

14 Mar 2014

Many people assume that it is much easier to move between social classes today than in the past. But new research by economist Gregory Clark, based on tracking family names across generations, reveals that mobility rates are lower than conventionally estimated, and that inherited advantage remains a deeply entrenched force. The fact that social mobility rates are so predictable at birth "should lead us to consider carefully how much inequality we want to permit in societies” and how much we want “a winner takes all society where some people get all the benefit and some people get all the costs," contends Clark.

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