Social Mobility in the Long Run: A Temporal Analysis of China from 1300 to 1900

79 Pages Posted: 18 Mar 2019 Last revised: 13 Jan 2020

See all articles by Carol H. Shiue

Carol H. Shiue

University of Colorado at Boulder - Department of Economics; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

Date Written: March 2019

Abstract

This paper studies intergenerational mobility with a population of families in central China over twenty generations. Employing genealogical data on individual lifetime achievements, I first find that while mobility was low initially there was a striking increase in mobility starting in the late 17th century. Through the lens of a Becker-Tomes (1979) model I explain this through a falling human capital earnings elasticity because the return to passing the civil service examinations, China's most important pathway to office and income at the time, declined over time. Second, as predicted by the model times of high human capital earnings elasticity are times of high cross-sectional inequality. Third, parent human

capital affects child income for any given nonhuman parental investment and is estimated to have 2/3 of the effect of nonhuman investments on child income. Moreover, educational inequality is even more strongly correlated with social persistence than income inequality. Finally, much of the observed increase in mobility is accounted for by lower differences in average clan income, consistent with the hypothesis that part of the earnings elasticity of human capital is group-specific.

JEL Classification: J62, N35, N45

Suggested Citation

Shiue, Carol Hua, Social Mobility in the Long Run: A Temporal Analysis of China from 1300 to 1900 (March 2019). CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP13589, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3354456

Carol Hua Shiue (Contact Author)

University of Colorado at Boulder - Department of Economics ( email )

Campus Box 256
Boulder, CO 80309
United States

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) ( email )

London
United Kingdom

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