Social Mobility in the Long Run: An Analysis of Tongcheng, China, 1300 to 1900

This paper studies the strength of the relationship between parental income and child income over the period 1300 to 1900, when many social changes, such as the erosion of hereditary class barriers, took place. The rich information in genealogies are used to examine social mobility across a representative socioeconomic population of ranging from commoners to elites. The results indicate, first, that intergenerational mobility in this sample population changed over time. Second, the changes correspond to a substantially higher level of mobility in the 19th century compared to the 17th century. Third, an inverse correlation between mobility and inequality can be seen in the time-series, implying social mobility for birth cohorts characterized by high inequality tends to be low, and vice versa.