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Hereditarian Fallacies? Inheritance of Social Status in England, 1600-2022

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  • Gregory Clark

    (University of Southern Denmark)

Abstract

A recent article in PNAS “The Inheritance of Social Status in England, 1600-1822” (Clark, 2023) argued that social status in England throughout these years showed a strong and stable pattern of inheritance. This pattern was consistent with the additive genetic inheritance of social abilities, in the presence of strong genetic assortment in these characteristics in parenting. This article has induced criticism that it committed “Hereditarian Fallacies” (Benning et al., 2023, 2024, 2025). Similar criticism also appeared in blog postings by the geneticist Sasha Gusev, and in Lala and Feldman, 2024, and Lala et al., 2025. This paper offers additional evidence for why patterns of status inheritance in England 1600-2022 are consistent with direct genetic inheritance, but not with cultural transmission of status.

Suggested Citation

  • Gregory Clark, 2025. "Hereditarian Fallacies? Inheritance of Social Status in England, 1600-2022," Working Papers 0285, European Historical Economics Society (EHES).
    • Handle: RePEc:hes:wpaper:0285
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