The name says it all. Multigenerational social mobility in Switzerland, 1550-2019

Konferenzbeitrag

Social mobility is a key element of meritocratic societies. We analyze multigenerational social mobility with a hand-collected yearly Swiss dataset from 1550 to 2019. With our surname-based approach, we measure the Swiss society's overall permeability over more than 450 years. Furthermore, we can provide insights into the distinct influence of the respective parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. We measure an average persistence rate of 0.42 over 15 generations and show how close the different social status indicators match with each other. A cyclical pattern indicates that social mobility was lowest in wartime generations with a spreading afterwards. Furthermore, we measure a significant influence of the grandparental generation but not for earlier generations. A purely two-generation view thus overestimates persistence. This reveals the importance of multigenerational social mobility analyses to examine equal opportunities in society. Overall, we conclude that our surname-based approach is suitable to investigate society's multigenerational permeability.

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• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Beiträge zur Jahrestagung des Vereins für Socialpolitik 2021: Climate Economics

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Education and Inequality ; Job, Occupational, and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion ; Economic History: Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy: Europe: Pre-1913
• Subject: multigenerational social mobility ; education ; wealth ; guilds ; surnames

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Häner, Melanie ; Schaltegger, Christoph A.
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics
• (where): Kiel, Hamburg
• (when): 2021

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/242355