Yes, I have read both books and will probably review them in the future. Clark looks at social mobility over many generations, which I believe is the right approach, but it is very difficult to acquire solid data over a long time period.
Clark finds that social mobility is much lower when looked at over many generations. He is likely correct, but I would like to see more multi-generational studies to confirm his results.
Be careful with his work on Sweden. He has a feudal mindset, which makes it hard for him to understand social mobility in Sweden which never was feudal, with vassalege, and who stopped having a serf/peasant class in Viking times. There was enormous potential for social mobility _within_ the farmer class, which was educated (80% literacy rate by the late 1700s) and had its own separate chamber in the parliament, and significant political power. (That the farmers and not the nobles were the ones supplying the soldiers to the king had large political ramifications) . Clark isn't well set up to notice this. Anders Anderson, the farm labourer was in a very different position than Anders Anderson, the largest land owner in the region, but both were in the 'farmer' class. When people dropped out of the merchant/priest/bureaucrat class and into the farmer class, it wasn't always a case of the failures becoming farm hand labourers again -- quite often it was the former labourers who had made money outside of the farming class who returned to it having earned the cash to become a landowner. This is an upward trajectory, but I don't think that Clark will have an easy time finding it given what he has been measuring. (Which is not a knock on Clark -- it is just that this sort of thing is hard.)
Gregory Clark has two great books on social mobility. It’s changed less than we think over time.
Yes, I have read both books and will probably review them in the future. Clark looks at social mobility over many generations, which I believe is the right approach, but it is very difficult to acquire solid data over a long time period.
Clark finds that social mobility is much lower when looked at over many generations. He is likely correct, but I would like to see more multi-generational studies to confirm his results.
Be careful with his work on Sweden. He has a feudal mindset, which makes it hard for him to understand social mobility in Sweden which never was feudal, with vassalege, and who stopped having a serf/peasant class in Viking times. There was enormous potential for social mobility _within_ the farmer class, which was educated (80% literacy rate by the late 1700s) and had its own separate chamber in the parliament, and significant political power. (That the farmers and not the nobles were the ones supplying the soldiers to the king had large political ramifications) . Clark isn't well set up to notice this. Anders Anderson, the farm labourer was in a very different position than Anders Anderson, the largest land owner in the region, but both were in the 'farmer' class. When people dropped out of the merchant/priest/bureaucrat class and into the farmer class, it wasn't always a case of the failures becoming farm hand labourers again -- quite often it was the former labourers who had made money outside of the farming class who returned to it having earned the cash to become a landowner. This is an upward trajectory, but I don't think that Clark will have an easy time finding it given what he has been measuring. (Which is not a knock on Clark -- it is just that this sort of thing is hard.)