Gregory Clark
About
Economic historian whose UK population-prosperity data is cited
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Claims by Gregory Clark (20 of 38)
Social Mobility Unchanged Over Centuries
Relative social mobility rates in a society like England have not improved in the last 300 years; rates in medieval England were just as high (or low) as they are now, and dimensions like social neighborhood and group affiliation show no improvement either.
Elites Persist Through Communism
In Hungary under Communism, surname analysis shows descendants of the previous elite preserved their status in spheres like medical school admission; in the political sphere the elite disappeared temporarily but re-emerged fully once the free market was restored, demonstrating that relative position is determined in a physics-like way regardless of regime.
Assortative Mating Widens Ability Distribution
Records of 1.7 million English marriages from 1837 onward show people consistently match with spouses who are as close to them genetically as their siblings, selecting on social status rather than looks, youth, or height; this does not change the average ability level but, repeated over generations, widens the distribution of ability and increases inequality.
Distance From Origin Predicts Selection
Among migrants from Latin America to the United States, the further away the origin country is from the US, the better the migrants tend to do and the more positively selected they are (e.g., Chileans are strongly positively selected)—consistent with a distance-based selection effect.
Rich Malthusian Societies Exist
Malthusianism is widely misinterpreted as being about low living standards; properly, a Malthusian society only requires a positive association between fertility and living standards plus limited material resources. Post-Black-Death England (under 2 million people in 1450) and Tahiti were rich Malthusian societies—Tahiti maintained high living standards through murderous internal warfare and infanticide killing a third to half of children—proving the equilibrium need not imply poverty.
Outcomes Are Genetics Plus Randomness
A detailed genealogical study of 300 years of English families testing all predictions of a genetic model (birth order, gender, mother vs father, family size, parental death, grandparent and interaction effects) concludes we are mainly the product of our genetics and randomness, with randomness a huge component—implying England has largely been a meritocracy for 300 years and, half-jokingly, that spending lots of time with your children doesn't matter.
Upper-Class Fertility Collapse Hurt Britain
From about 1850 to the 1920s-30s, an astonishingly low fertility (one to one-and-a-half children per family for 50-60 years) emerged among the British upper classes, compounded by 20% of upper-class men dying in World War I, dramatically shrinking the relative size of the upper class and offering a potential explanation for Britain's lukewarm economic performance and declining entrepreneurship since WWI.
High Taxes Compatible With Innovation
Denmark proves that a society can impose very high tax rates and a large amount of income compression and redistribution while remaining a highly productive, technologically innovative society—so heavy redistribution need not destroy economic functionality.
19th-Century European Migration Not Selective
Surname analysis shows nearly all European-descended groups in the US are very average, indicating 19th-century migration out of Europe was not strongly selected; the evidence even shows Scandinavian and possibly Irish emigration was negatively selected, while Quebec French-speakers became a US underclass—contrasting with the strong positive selection of Chinese, Indian, and Jewish immigrants who form the new American elite.
Scotland Subsidized by South of England
Scotland is doing relatively well economically only because of generous subsidies from the South of England paid to keep it in the UK—including free university education that forces Scottish universities to charge English (but not, under EU rules, German) students—so Scottish independence would be like a parasite detaching from its host.
Can Predict Spouse But Not Happiness
Although the general pattern of strong assortative mating lets Clark predict the kind of person someone will marry, it provides no basis for marriage advice because we don't know whether highly assortative marriages make people happy—perhaps everyone in such marriages is unhappy and would be better off choosing on romance.
People Obsess Over Relative Position
People, particularly in Britain, have a deep fascination with relative position in society—who attends elite universities, who becomes members of parliament, and the backgrounds of such people—making relative social mobility an important feature of societies even if material living standards have risen fifteenfold since 1800.
Relative Status Preserved Across Migration
When people move from Britain to Australia, Canada, or the United States, their material welfare increases very significantly, but their relative social position does not change and is somehow preserved across these different societies—showing physical mobility raises absolute outcomes without altering relative rank.
Denmark and Britain Equally Immobile
Despite radically different social institutions—Denmark's free education to age 24, living subsidies, and compressed income distribution—social mobility rates in modern Denmark are no higher than in Britain, showing that institutions have little influence on the connection between parents' and children's social outcomes.
Meritocracy Achieved in England by 1700
A truly meritocratic society is one where the only things determining social position are genetic inheritance and randomness; by this definition England already achieved meritocracy by around 1700, meaning meritocracy was reached hundreds of years before the modern era.
Assortative Mating Versus Inequality Tradeoff
If you believe the engine of a high-tech society is the top 1-5% of the ability distribution, more assortative mating raises growth; but assortative mating also produces more inequality, so the only way to compress inequality would be much more random matching—revealing a fundamental tradeoff between growth-driving extremes and equality.
Nordic Policy Doesn't Reduce Ability Inequality
Despite Denmark's compressed income distribution, free education, and subsidies, Nordic countries have not reduced the inequality of PISA test-score measures compared to much more unequal societies like the United States, because people in Nordic societies still mate very strongly assortatively.
Two Great Puzzles of Economic History
There are essentially only two great problems in the economic history of the world: the incredibly long delay in the arrival of the Industrial Revolution, and the incredible divergence since it, producing differences of about 50 or 60 to 1 in material living standards between societies.
Cousin Marriage Reduces Ability Distribution
Cousin marriage is poor for assortativeness because most people lack many cousins of the right age and gender, forcing essentially random cousin matching; systematically carried out, it should reduce the distribution of abilities within a society compared to the tightly assortative Northern European pattern.
No Hypergamy in English Marriage Markets
Contrary to the common idea that women marry up because men value physical appearance more, analysis of English marriages back to 1837 (Clark and Cummins, PLOS One) finds no hypergamy—men and women end up matching in social status, showing complete dominance of social status in determining unions.
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