IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/wpaper/54513.html

Intergenerational mobility in England, 1858-2012. Wealth, surnames, and social mobility

Author

Listed:
  • Clark, Gregory
  • Cummins, Neil

Abstract

This paper uses a panel of 21,618 people with rare surnames whose wealth is observed at death in England and Wales 1858-2012 to measure the intergeneration elasticity of wealth over five generations. We show, using rare surnames to track families, that wealth is much more persistent over generations than standard one generation estimates would suggest. There is still a significant correlation between the wealth of families five generations apart. We show that this finding can be reconciled with standard estimates of wealth mobility by positing an underlying Markov process of wealth inheritance with an intergenerational elasticity of 0.70-0.75 throughout the years 1858-2012. The enormous social and economic changes of this long period had surprisingly little effect on the strength of inheritance of wealth.

Suggested Citation

  • Clark, Gregory & Cummins, Neil, 2013. "Intergenerational mobility in England, 1858-2012. Wealth, surnames, and social mobility," Economic History Working Papers 54513, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:wpaper:54513
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://researchonline.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/54513/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nicoletti Cheti & Ermisch John F, 2008. "Intergenerational Earnings Mobility: Changes across Cohorts in Britain," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 7(2), pages 1-38, January.
    2. Jason Long, 2013. "The surprising social mobility of Victorian Britain," European Review of Economic History, European Historical Economics Society, vol. 17(1), pages 1-23, February.
    3. Lindahl, Mikael & Palme, Mårten & Sandgren Massih, Sofia & Sjögren, Anna, 2012. "The intergenerational persistence of human capital: an empirical analysis of four generations," Working Paper Series 2012:12, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
    4. repec:ehl:wpaper:54515 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Dearden, Lorraine & Machin, Stephen & Reed, Howard, 1997. "Intergenerational Mobility in Britain," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 107(440), pages 47-66, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Family wealth persistence over several centuries
      by Economic Logician in Economic Logic on 2013-12-20 20:54:00

    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 & Cummins, Neil, 2013. "Intergenerational mobility in England, 1858-2012. Wealth, surnames, and social mobility," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 54513, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. repec:ehl:wpaper:54515 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Zhu, Ziming, 2022. "Like father like son? Intergenerational immobility in England, 1851-1911," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 117588, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Luís Clemente-Casinhas & Luís Filipe Martins & Alexandra Ferreira-Lopes, 2025. "Using Survey Data to Estimate Intergenerational Mobility in Income and Education in Portugal," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 176(1), pages 51-106, January.
    5. Callais, Justin & Geloso, Vincent, 2024. "Wealth generation: How to boost income mobility in the UK," IEA Discussion Papers 122, Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA).
    6. repec:ehl:wpaper:117588 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Markus Jäntti & Stephen P. Jenkins, 2013. "Income Mobility," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 607, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    8. Bertha Rohenkohl, 2019. "Intergenerational Income Mobility in the UK:New evidence using the BHPS and Understanding Society," Working Papers 2019017, The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics.
    9. Céline Lecavelier des Etangs-Levallois, 2017. "Overview of intergenerational earnings mobility in Germany," Thema Working Papers 2017-11, THEMA (Théorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), CY Cergy-Paris University, ESSEC and CNRS.
    10. Honge Gong & Andrew Leigh & Xin Meng, 2012. "Intergenerational Income Mobility In Urban China," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 58(3), pages 481-503, September.
    11. Sayema H. Bidisha, 2009. "Intergenerational Earnings Mobility of Immigrants and Ethnic Minorities in the UK," Discussion Papers 09/10, University of Nottingham, GEP.
    12. Paul Gregg & Lindsey Macmillan, 2009. "Family Income and Education in the Next Generation: Exploring income gradients in education for current cohorts of youth," The Centre for Market and Public Organisation 09/223, The Centre for Market and Public Organisation, University of Bristol, UK.
    13. Erikson, Robert & Goldthorpe, John H., 2009. "Income and Class Mobility Between Generations in Great Britain: The Problem of Divergent Findings from the Data-sets of Birth Cohort Studies," Working Paper Series 4/2009, Stockholm University, Swedish Institute for Social Research.
    14. Hyungna Oh & Yun Jeong Choi, 2014. "Limited Income Mobility in Korea," Working papers 2014rwp-64, Yonsei University, Yonsei Economics Research Institute.
    15. Sajid Amin Javed & Mohammad Irfan, 2014. "Intergenerational Mobility: Evidence from Pakistan Panel Household Survey," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 53(2), pages 175-203.
    16. Nybom, Martin & Stuhler, Jan, 2013. "Interpreting Trends in Intergenerational Income Mobility," IZA Discussion Papers 7514, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    17. Maribel Jiménez, 2016. "Movilidad Intergeneracional del Ingreso en Argentina. Un Análisis de sus Cambios Temporales desde el Enfoque de Igualdad de Oportunidades," CEDLAS, Working Papers 0203, CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
    18. Blanden, Jo, 2009. "How much can we learn from international comparisons of intergenerational mobility?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 28283, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    19. Maribel Jimenez & Monica Jimenez, 2009. "La Movilidad Intergeneracional del Ingreso: Evidencia para Argentina," CEDLAS, Working Papers 0084, CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
    20. Clark, Gregory & Cummins, Neil, 2013. "Surnames and social mobility: England 1230-2012," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 54515, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    21. Sayema H. Bidisha & Anupam Das & Adian A. McFarlane, 2013. "Microeconometric analysis of earnings mobility of immigrants and ethnic minorities: evidence from the UK [Mikroökonometrische Analyse der Einkommensmobilität zwischen Generationen bei Immigranten u," Journal for Labour Market Research, Springer;Institute for Employment Research/ Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), vol. 46(1), pages 35-42, March.
    22. Maribel Jiménez, 2011. "Un Análisis Empírico de las No Linealidades en la Movilidad Intergeneracional del Ingreso. El caso de la Argentina," CEDLAS, Working Papers 0114, CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • I23 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Higher Education; Research Institutions
    • J62 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Job, Occupational and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion
    • N33 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Europe: Pre-1913

    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:ehl:wpaper:54513. 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: LSERO Manager on behalf of EH Dept. (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/chlseuk.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.