IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/auu/hpaper/058.html

Immobile Australia: Surnames show Strong Status Persistence, 1870-2017

Author

Listed:
  • Gregory Clark
  • Andrew Leigh
  • Mike Pottenger

Abstract

The paper estimates long run social mobility in Australia 1870-2017 tracking the status of rare surnames. The status information includes occupations from electoral rolls 1903-1980, and records of degrees awarded by Melbourne and Sydney universities 1852-2017. Status persistence was strong throughout, with an intergenerational correlation of 0.7-0.8, and no change over time. Notwithstanding egalitarian norms, high immigration and a well-targeted social safety net, Australian long-run social mobility rates are low. Despite evidence on conventional measures that Australia has higher rates of social mobility than the UK or USA (Mendolia and Siminski, 2016), status persistence for surnames is as high as that in England or the USA. Mobility rates are also just as low if we look just at mobility within descendants of UK immigrants, so ethnic effects explain none of the immobility.

Suggested Citation

  • Gregory Clark & Andrew Leigh & Mike Pottenger, 2017. "Immobile Australia: Surnames show Strong Status Persistence, 1870-2017," CEH Discussion Papers 07, Centre for Economic History, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
    • Handle: RePEc:auu:hpaper:058
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cbe.anu.edu.au/researchpapers/CEH/WP201707.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Miles Corak, 2013. "Income Inequality, Equality of Opportunity, and Intergenerational Mobility," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 27(3), pages 79-102, Summer.
    2. Leigh Andrew, 2007. "Intergenerational Mobility in Australia," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 7(2), pages 1-28, December.
    3. Gregory Clark, 2015. "The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 10181-2.
    4. Bhashkar Mazumder, 2005. "Fortunate Sons: New Estimates of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States Using Social Security Earnings Data," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(2), pages 235-255, May.
    5. Florencia Torche & Alejandro Corvalan, 2018. "Estimating Intergenerational Mobility With Grouped Data," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 47(4), pages 787-811, November.
    6. Raj Chetty & Nathaniel Hendren & Patrick Kline & Emmanuel Saez & Nicholas Turner, 2014. "Is the United States Still a Land of Opportunity? Recent Trends in Intergenerational Mobility," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(5), pages 141-147, May.
    7. Gregory Clark & Neil Cummins, 2015. "Intergenerational Wealth Mobility in England, 1858–2012: Surnames and Social Mobility," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 125(582), pages 61-85, February.
    8. Solon, Gary, 1992. "Intergenerational Income Mobility in the United States," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(3), pages 393-408, June.
    9. Peter Whiteford, 2010. "The Australian Tax‐Transfer System: Architecture and Outcomes," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 86(275), pages 528-544, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Awaworyi Churchill, Sefa & Chang, Simon & Smyth, Russell & Trinh, Trong-Anh, 2025. "The long run gender origins of entrepreneurship: Evidence from Australia's convict history," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 40(6).
    2. Christophe Lévêque, 2020. "Political connections, political favoritism and political competition: evidence from the granting of building permits by French mayors," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 184(1), pages 135-155, July.
    3. Catherine Guirkinger & Gani Aldashev & Alisher Aldashev & Mate Fodor, 2022. "Economic Persistence Despite Adverse Policies: Evidence from Kyrgyzstan," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 132(641), pages 258-272.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Clark, Gregory & Leigh, Andrew & Pottenger, Mike, 2020. "Frontiers of mobility: Was Australia 1870–2017 a more socially mobile society than England?," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    2. Cobb-Clark, Deborah A. & Dahmann, Sarah C. & Salamanca, Nicolás & Zhu, Anna, 2022. "Intergenerational disadvantage: Learning about equal opportunity from social assistance receipt," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    3. Paweł Bukowski & Gregory Clark & Attila Gáspár & Rita Pető, 2022. "Social Mobility and Political Regimes: Intergenerational Mobility in Hungary, 1949–2017," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 35(4), pages 1551-1588, October.
    4. Orhan Torul & Oguz Oztunali, 2017. "Intergenerational Educational Mobility in Europe," Working Papers 2017/03, Bogazici University, Department of Economics.
    5. Chu, Luke Yu-Wei & Lin, Ming-Jen, 2016. "Economic development and intergenerational earnings mobility: Evidence from Taiwan," Working Paper Series 19495, Victoria University of Wellington, School of Economics and Finance.
    6. Lijie Song, 2021. "Does Public Investment Promote Intergenerational Mobility? Who Really Benefits?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 158(1), pages 59-80, November.
    7. You, Jing & Ding, Xinxin & Niño-Zarazúa, Miguel & Wang, Sangui, 2021. "The intergenerational impact of house prices on education: evidence from China," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    8. Brea-Martinez, Gabriel, 2021. "The beneficial impact of mother’s work on children’s absolute income mobility, Southern Sweden (1947-2015)," SocArXiv c27s8, Center for Open Science.
    9. Berger, Thor & Engzell, Per & Eriksson, Björn & Molinder, Jakob, 2023. "Social Mobility in Sweden before the Welfare State," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 83(2), pages 431-463, June.
    10. Rozinskaya, N. & Drobyshevskaya, T., 2022. "Quantitative estimates of intergenerational mobility," Journal of the New Economic Association, New Economic Association, vol. 57(5), pages 93-111.
    11. Liss, Erik & Korpi, Martin & Wennberg, Karl, 2023. "Absolute income mobility and the effect of parent generation inequality: An extended decomposition approach," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    12. Elisa Jácome & Ilyana Kuziemko & Suresh Naidu, 2021. "Mobility for All: Representative Intergenerational Mobility Estimates over the 20th Century," Working Papers 302, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Center for Economic Policy Studies..
    13. Paul Gregg & Lindsey MacMillan & Claudia Vittori, 2014. "Moving Towards Estimating Lifetime Intergenerational Economic Mobility in the UK," The Centre for Market and Public Organisation 14/332, The Centre for Market and Public Organisation, University of Bristol, UK.
    14. Chelsea Murray & Robert Graham Clark & Silvia Mendolia & Peter Siminski, 2018. "Direct Measures of Intergenerational Income Mobility for Australia," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 94(307), pages 445-468, December.
    15. Hsiu-Fen Hsu, 2021. "Intergenerational persistence in latent socioeconomic status: evidence from Taiwan," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 19(4), pages 753-772, December.
    16. Nam, Jaehyun, 2019. "Government spending during childhood and intergenerational income mobility in the United States," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 332-343.
    17. Feng, Qundi & He, Qinying, 2022. "Does parental migration increase upward intergenerational mobility? Evidence from rural China," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    18. Markus Jäntti & Stephen P. Jenkins, 2013. "Income Mobility," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 607, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    19. Jaehyun Nam, 2021. "Does Economic Inequality Constrain Intergenerational Economic Mobility? The Association Between Income Inequality During Childhood and Intergenerational Income Persistence in the United States," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 154(2), pages 469-488, April.
    20. Javier Cortes Orihuela & Juan D. Díaz & Pablo Gutiérrez Cubillos & Pablo A. Troncoso, 2024. "Everything’s not lost: revisiting TSTSLS estimates of intergenerational mobility in developing countries," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 31(1), pages 66-94, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J62 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Job, Occupational and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:auu:hpaper:058. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/chanuau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.