We do know the state going back to england even in the middle ages, so wha actually led me ons path was initially just and idea of measuring what social mobility was like in new england compared to modern england speak with what are some of the methods that used to measure this . Whats the distribution of surnames among society, among elite and under society. For any society can measure the underlying rate of social mobility speed why do we look at the surname clark and tell us what you discovered. Unfortunate one of the things i did discover personally is that the surname clark should be very high standing surname. Clark and the middle ages in new england was in the name for an attorney and also for anyone who could write. Thats 1 of society. So clark should be the elite of the society but, unfortunately, the name is also applied to the servants of the clark. It turned out to not be a particularly elite name but it turns out that in many in england youre named after a place. And so a name like berkeley, for example, which is now the name of the university and the name of a philosopher, thats a made village in gloucestershire and is also where the name of the Bank Barclays comes from. Thats just a deviation of that name. But the reason that these are the high status names in england was your given that they because thats where your housewives. So if im in london, england is called john but i am john the berkeley. So high class names located people by place. If im a peasant, no one called me John Berkeley because everyone was berkeley. So they would get names that would be more or after occupation. Coward is how heard. Or lane, which is where your house was. We can petition a name to high status and low status, and how do we measure the league . We know who went to oxford and cambridge back to the 1200s. So we know the names of everyone from then till now who attended oxford and cambridge back that always represent about the top 1 of english society. And so what we can do is look at how over represented by these elite names in the university over time, and thats going to measure the rate of social mobility the nice thing is you can measure that does with the number of the correlation of your status with your parents. If its one compares no social mobility. Everything is predictable. If it is zero, this complete social mobility, nothing is predictable at birth. So that just establishes a nice simple measure for all societies. And the answer you get for medieval england is that number is. 8. Heres the interesting fact. Oxidant cambridge no, we didnt exactly the same except for we have defined a new class of elite of surnames because all those medieval guys are not completely average. We look at these new elite of surnames, whats the correlation . 8. Theres been no change in social mobility in england over 800 years. So the interesting thing the book finds is that social mobility is always a better. Its pervasive phenomena, but its always very slow. Any other bizarre thing is its not effected by social institution. Some people expected, for example, that america the land of liberty will be, have high rates of social mobility and sweden, the land of socialism with a society of very low sociability. What we find is that social mobility in modern america is all about higher than in medieval england. It is. 75. Whats the number and sweden . Its about. 75. And again we can look at england as ago from the 19th century where there is no tax essentially, no public education. And so you would think in 19th century england the way to get into oxford and cambridge in the time is you had to go to special schools, you have to learn latin. You need the right background. Now anyone can get into oxford and cambridge if they do on the Standard High School exam. So you would think we would be moving from a world of slow social mobility what of much more rapid but building a. The answer again is no. Its exactly the same. One of the big conclusions of this book is that there is a social civic that determines social mobility. Just like the force of gravity is the same pretty much anywhere on the planet, the force of social mobility operates in the same across all societies we could observe. The amazing thing is one of the other things we observe is timing is china. That is roughly the same applied weight of social mobility. Thats a startling kind of finding. I want to emphasize theres always social mobility. If you are an elite now in the future your decisions are going to on average be perfectly average. But the interesting thing is that takes up 300 years, 10 generations. If youre at the bottom of society now, in future you have descendents that i shall achieve mediocrity. They will get to be average. That process takes about 10 generations. The amazing thing is while its always there, it doesnt seem to alter across the society. Thats i think what a big conclusions are a lot of the book looks at different examples in society and seeing what it is here, what is in other places. Since the book was published ive gathered data from for the societies. One of them were going to look at is actually russia, and russia after the communist revolution and then with the restoration of capitalism in recent years, what we want to look at, looking at Moscow State University as our marker, did that bring about a period of enhanced social mobility, and have we been seeing a period of decline social mobility when she returned to the oligarchs in russia. We havent done that yet but it will be interesting to see. If the rest of the book is great the prediction would it doesnt matter. The argument here is that whatever the social system is, there are people who have ability and energy. And theyre going to figure out how to get to the top of the pile. So in medieval england the social system is very different, but there are people who figure this out. So, for example, you may not know that geoffrey chaucer, the first great writer in english, inane chaucer means shoemaker. His ancestors something that three or four generations back were actually shoemakers, but then his grandfather and father became he had talent and ability. So as he ascended the social ladder and the fact his daughter married the duke of lancaster, so you always see people succeeding is a site by the interesting thing is the mechanist can be very different. But whats happening is that people figure it out. If im under communism, im in high status family, i figure how youd do well. If people are going to call for ask, im going to call for x. More vigorously than anyone else and that will please the in the right occupation in the right places. So thats the interesting whatever social system you set up people figure out, certain things that have to do a. Of bad. What is all of your research mean, the socalled American Dream . I have to say that im afraid that there is no special American Dream. America is not a special society is not about society. Its just not any better than medieval england. So i think that does imply any into the American Dream. The way we see that within america is that the are actually names in america that are distinctive of the rich of the 1920s. So what we can do is simply say if you now take the records of the American Medical Association as an elite, whats happening over time to these highclass names . And the answer is they are still heavily overrepresented amongst modern doctors and their declining in the representation but at a very modest rate means that the elite of the 1920s still going to be elite even 100 or even 200 years from now. Interesting in america most european names, european origin or similar state, the germans, irish, english, english with one exception. French names or low status in the United States. Names like daniel in, bergerac, these names come youre less likely to be a doctor if you have one of these names. Those people have lived in north america for 300 years. But theyve always been an underclass within American Society come and whats been revealed by the is and isnt that they are actually moving towards the average but it still going to take another couple hundred just before they become the average. This is a good comp a lot of them are concert in new england which is not a low status part of the country. You can also look at the cajun names in louisiana. I can, low status, moving towards the meeting again but moving at a very slow rate. Other names we can look at our, for example, names of the keynote origin, low status, moving towards the means of moving at a very slow rate. So im afraid the conclusion is that america may offer many things. It doesnt offer an alchemy that can transmit to people and say the threat the bottom of your home society you can come to america and now you are free. What could happen is if youre at the bottom of the home society you come to america and youre going to be at the bottom of American Society. If youre at the top of your home society you come to america and the at the top of American Society. Americas most elite of all names and growth are hindu, the media. And the average group in america, there are three doctors per thousand. For elite hindu names its 40 per thousand. This is going to be a new great upper class of the United States, but if you look at those people have look at the names of those people, those with the names of they are moving themselves from india to the United States but they are the very top elite of Indian Society who are well educated, who have skills that are now doing very well in america. A book is called the son also rises surnames and the history of social mobility. The author, Gregory Clark thanks for being on the booktv. Sure. In this years president ial candidates have written books to introduce themselves to voters and to vote their views on issues. Heres a look at some of the candidates books