A vigorous discussion has been triggered by the release of Gregory Clark’s The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility. In this book, Clark details his work which shows a large transmission of status from generation to generation, all across the world, going back centuries. The discussion has raged on the mode of this transmission. How does it occur? Clark found that when you look at surnames, which trace paternal lineages, you find that the status of families today is related to their status centuries ago. That is, surnames associated with high status in the past are over-represented among high status individuals today, and vice versa. This pattern holds across much of the world, from England, to Sweden, to Japan, to Korea, to China, to Chile. The pattern goes back centuries – Normans surnames are still overrepresented among the English elite. The descendants of the samurai…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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