IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/dia/wpaper/dt2020-09.html

Persistence through Revolutions

Author

Listed:
  • Alberto Alesina

    (Harvard University, NBER, CEPR, and IGIER Bocconi)

  • Marlon Seror

    (University of Bristol, Paris School of Economics and DIAL)

  • David Y. Yang

    (Harvard University and NBER)

  • Yang You

    (Harvard University)

  • Weihong Zeng

    (Xi’an Jiaotong University)

Abstract

Can efforts to eradicate inequality in wealth and education eliminate intergenerational persistence of socioeconomic status? The Chinese Communist Revolution in the 1950s and Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976 aimed to do exactly that. Using newly digitized archival records and contemporary census and household survey data, we show that the revolutions were effective in homogenizing the population economically in the short run. However, the pattern of inequality that characterized the pre-revolution generation re-emerges today. Almost half a century after the revolutions, individuals whose grandparents belonged to the pre-revolution elite earn 16 percent more and have completed more than 11 percent additional years of schooling than those from non-elite households. In addition, individuals with pre-revolution elite grandparents hold different values: they are less averse to inequality, more individualistic, more pro-market, and more likely to see hard work as critical to success. Through intergenerational transmission of values, socioeconomic conditions thus survived one of the most aggressive attempts to eliminate differences in the population and to foster mobility.

Suggested Citation

  • Alberto Alesina & Marlon Seror & David Y. Yang & Yang You & Weihong Zeng, 2020. "Persistence through Revolutions," Working Papers DT/2020/09, DIAL (Développement, Institutions et Mondialisation).
    • Handle: RePEc:dia:wpaper:dt2020-09
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://dial.ird.fr/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/2020-09-Persistence-through-Revolutions.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2020
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Voth, Hans-Joachim, 2020. "Persistence – Myth and Mystery," CEPR Discussion Papers 15417, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Reynal-Querol, Marta & García-Montalvo, José, 2020. "Colonization, Early Settlers and Development: The Case of Latin America," CEPR Discussion Papers 15020, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Marta Reynal-Querol & José García-Montalvo, 2020. "Colonization, Early Settlers and Development: The Case of Latin America," Working Papers 1189, Barcelona School of Economics.
    4. Clark, Gregory & Bukowski, Paweł & Gáspár, Attila & Pető, Rita, 2020. "Social Mobility and Social Regimes: Intergenerational Mobility in Hungary, 1949-2017," CEPR Discussion Papers 15284, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. 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.
    6. Fang, Ming & Lai, Weizheng & Xia, Congling, 2025. "Anti-corruption and political trust: Evidence from China," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 234(C).
    7. María Angélica Bautista & Felipe González & Luis R. Martínez & Pablo Muñoz & Mounu Prem, 2025. "Dictatorship, Higher Education, and Social Mobility," Journal of Historical Political Economy, now publishers, vol. 4(4), pages 509-545, February.
    8. Muscatelli, Anton & Roy, Graeme & Trew, Alex, 2022. "Persistent States: Lessons For Scottish Devolution And Independence," National Institute Economic Review, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, vol. 260, pages 51-63, May.
    9. José Garcia Montalvo & Marta Reynal-Querol, 2020. "Colonization, early settlers and development: The case of Latin America," Economics Working Papers 1729, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    10. Hiroshi Kumanomido & Yutaro Takayasu, 2025. "Elite Persistence in Family: The Role of Adoption in Prewar Japan," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 537, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.

    More about this item

    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:dia:wpaper:dt2020-09. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Loic Le Pezennec (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/diallfr.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.