Tue October 16, 2012 Movin' On Up? That May Depend On Your Last
Name Originally published on Tue October 16, 2012 7:06 pm Here
is a question that social scientists have been pondering for
years: How much of your success in life is tied to your parents,
and how much do you control? The academic term used for this is
"social mobility." And a striking new finding from economic
historian Gregory Clark of the University of California, Davis
claims your success in life may actually be determined by
ancestors who lived hundreds of years ago. That means improving
opportunities across generations might be a lot harder than
anyone imagined. Clark did not set out to study social mobility;
he was trying to study how the British elite formed in the lead-
up to the Industrial Revolution. Someone suggested he trace
surnames, because there is a long record of elite names in
British society. "For example, in England, we know the names of
most people who went to Oxford or Cambridge from about 1200
right up until the present," C