Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-5g6vh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T17:35:01.070Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Survival of the richest? Social status, fertility and social mobility in England 1541-1824

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 September 2011

NINA BOBERG-FAZLIC ,
PAUL SHARP  and
JACOB WEISDORF
NINA BOBERG-FAZLIC
Affiliation:
University of Copenhagen, nina.boberg@econ.ku.dk
PAUL SHARP
Affiliation:
Humboldt University, Berlin/University of Copenhagen, paul.sharp@econ.ku.dk
JACOB WEISDORF
Affiliation:
University of Copenhagen, jacob.weisdorf@econ.ku.dk
Get access

Abstract

We use data collected by the Cambridge Group to investigate and explain differences in fertility by socio-economic group in pre-industrial England. We find, in line with results presented by Greg Clark, that wealthier groups did indeed have higher fertility until the 1700s. We demonstrate that this had to do with earlier age at marriage for women. We then turn to the likely social and economic impact of this, considering Clark's hypothesis that ‘middle-class values’ spread through English society prior to the Industrial Revolution. Through the construction of social mobility tables, we demonstrate that the children of the rich were indeed spreading through society, but they were small in number relative to poorer sections of society, and moreover the children of the poor were also entering the middle classes.

Type
Research Article
Information
European Review of Economic History , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , December 2011 , pp. 365 - 392
Copyright
Copyright © European Historical Economics Society 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Becker, G. S. (1976). Altruism, egoism, and genetic fitness: economics and sociobiology. Journal of Economic Literature 14 (3), pp. 817–26.Google Scholar
Blackmore, S. (2000). The Meme Machine. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Booth, C. (1886). Occupations of the people of the United Kingdom. Journal of the Statistical Society of London 49 (2), pp. 314–444.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, G. (2007). A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, G. (2008). In defense of the Malthusian interpretation of history. European Review of Economic History 12 (2), pp. 175–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, G. and Cummins, N. (2009). Urbanization, mortality, and fertility in Malthusian England. American Economic Review: Papers & Proceedings 99 (2), pp. 242–7.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clark, G. and Cummins, N. (2010). Malthus to modernity: England's first fertility transition, 1760–1800. Mimeo.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, G. and Hamilton, G. (2006). Survival of the richest: the Malthusian mechanism in pre-industrial England. Journal of Economic History 66 (3), pp. 707–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cummins, N. (2009). Marital fertility and wealth in transition era France, 1750–1850. Working Paper No. 2009–16, Paris School of Economics.Google Scholar
Dawkins, R. (1976). The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ferrie, J. and Long, J. (2010). Intergenerational occupational mobility in Britain and the US since 1850. American Economic Review (forthcoming)Google Scholar
Galor, O. (2005). From stagnation to growth: Unified Growth Theory. In Aghion, P. and Durlauf, S. N. (eds.), Handbook of Economic Growth, vol. 1A. Amsterdam: North-Holland.Google Scholar
Galor, O. and Moav, O. (2002). Natural selection and the origin of economic growth. Quarterly Journal of Economics 117 (4), pp. 1133–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldthorpe, J. H., Llewellyn, C. and Payne, C. (1980). Social Mobility and Class Structure in Modern Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Grantham, G. (2008). Explaining the industrial transition: a non-Malthusian perspective. European Review of Economic History 12 (2), pp. 155–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heath, A. and Payne, C. (2000). Social mobility. In Halsey, A. H. and Webb, J. (eds.), Twentieth-Century British Social Trends, 3rd edn.Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Leunig, T., Minns, C. and Wallis, P. (2009). Networks in the premodern economy: the market for London apprenticeships, 1600–1749. CEP Discussion Paper, No. 956Google Scholar
Lindert, P. H. and Williamson, J. G. (1982). Revising England's social tables, 1688–1812. Explorations in Economic History 19 (4), pp. 385–408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Livi-Bacci, M. (1977). A History of Italian Fertility During the Last Two Centuries. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Long, J. (2010). Social mobility within and across generations in Britain since 1851. Mimeo.Google Scholar
McCloskey, D. (2008). ‘You know Ernest, the rich are different from you and me’: a comment on Clark's A Farewell to Alms. European Review of Economic History 12 (2), pp. 138–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miles, A. (1999). Social Mobility in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century England. Basingstoke: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Persson, G. (2008). The Malthus delusion. European Review of Economic History 12 (2), pp. 165–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shenk, D. (2010). The Genius in All of Us: Why Everything You've Been Told About Genetics, Talent and IQ Is Wrong. New York: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Souden, D. (1984). Movers and stayers in family reconstitution populations. Local Population History 33, pp. 11–28.Google Scholar
van der Beek, K. (2010). Technology–skill complementarity on the eve of the Industrial Revolution: new evidence from England, 1710–1722. MS, Ben-Gurion University.Google Scholar
Vann, R. T. and Eversley, D. (1992). Friends in Life and Death: The British and Irish Quakers in the Demographic Transition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Voth, H.-J. (2008). Clark's intellectual Sudoku. European Review of Economic History 12 (2), pp. 149–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weir, D. R. (1994). New estimates of nuptiality and marital fertility in France, 1740–1911. Population Studies 48 (2), pp. 307–31.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
West-Eberhard, M. J. (2003). Developmental Plasticity and Evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wrigley, E. A., Davies, R.Oeppen, J. and Schofield, R. (1997). English Population History from Family Reconstitution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar