From an interview with economic historian Gregory P. Clark promoting his new book The Son Also Rises, which is mostly about how surnames don't rise or fall but they remain fairly stable in class over the generations.
Q. So what's driving this? Why is social status so sticky?
A. This is intellectually the most intriguing part of the story, and it's one that's hard to make a lot of progress on. It is clear that families are very powerful determinants of children’s outcomes. But what do parents transmit to their children? Is it mainly some type of culture? Or is it mainly genetics?
The data does not exist to provide any conclusive answer to this question. But even if this is cultural transmission, it looks in all respects just the same as biological inheritance. The book performs a series of tests to see if biological transmission can be ruled out as the important link, and the empirical patterns never rule this out.
One factor is that high status surnames can recruit new female talent. For example, John Churchill, the first duke of Marlborough, enjoyed a spectacular career as a politician-adventurer, eventually winning the crucial battle of his generation over the French at Blenheim. He was made the first Duke of Marlborough and given a palace and then ... not much happened talentwise for five or six generations of Churchills. But then the dull 6th or 7th Duke of Marlborough married a woman of energy and ambition, and their son Randolph landed an American heiress, Jennie Jerome, who was a tigress, and, voila, Winston Churchill.
Or consider George P. Bush, the half-Mexican son of Jeb. He's kind of a doofus, so he probably married a doofette, right? I did a little a research on the latest Mr. Bush, and doofette she's not. George P. Bush still sounds implausible as President, but not so implausible once I realized that Amanda Bush sounds like she'd be a dynamic, power-behind-the-throne First Lady.
Also, ambitious people sometimes change their surnames. For example, auto mechanic Stephen Krol left behind his bad credit ratings and child support-demanding ex-wives and became Dr. Essay Anne Vanderbilt, heiress to the Society family, Stealth Bomber scientist, and golf entrepreneur.
General Lew Wallace wrote one of the biggest bestselling novels of the 19th Century, Ben-Hur, so it's not that surprising that many mid-20th Century bestsellers were written by Irving Wallace. Of course, Wallace's son, the nonfiction writer, has gone back to being David Wallechinsky.
For example, if biological transmission is the most important, then elite groups will never be the product of the adoption of particular cultural traits. Instead they will always represent a selection from the upper end of abilities of a parent population. Modern Jews will not be elite because of the social and religious mores of Judaism, but because they are a selection based on ability from a larger parent Jewish population.
For all such elite groups we observe, they do indeed turn out to be a selection from a larger population. Egyptian Copts are such a social elite, for example, but they represent the descendants of the Copts rich enough at the time of the Arabian conquest to be able to afford the head tax levied on all who did not convert to Islam.
A recent book, "The Triple Package" [by Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld], argues the extreme opposite of biology in explaining social status, with the claim that successful cultural groups in the U.S. have three key features leading to success, one being impulse control.
But what is remarkable is how disparate the culturally successful groups they identify are – Jews, Chinese, Indians, Mormons, Iranians, Lebanese, Nigerians, Cubans. And it is demonstrable that most of the successful groups identified here were elites selected from the parent populations as a combined result of politics at home and immigration policy in the U.S.
By the way, I found where I got the idea that Mrs. Thatcher was seen in Britain as having a downscale surname. I'm rereading The Third World War: August 1985, a 1979 sci-fi war novel by a half dozen British generals and Economist editors. The conservative Republican president of the U.S. who defeats Walter Mondale in the 1984 election is "Governor Thompson." The Tory prime minister of the UK in 1985 in this alternate future is "Mrs. Plumber."
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55 comments:
""""But what is remarkable is how disparate the culturally successful groups they identify are – Jews, Chinese, Indians, Mormons, Iranians, Lebanese, Nigerians, Cubans. And it is demonstrable that most of the successful groups identified here were elites selected from the parent populations as a combined result of politics at home and immigration policy in the U.S.""""
In other words, the Mormons being the exception, these diverse elites or top successful percentages of various ethnic groups are not necessarily accurate representations of their group at large.
To get a better idea of each of these groups, perhaps it would be best to examine them at large in their own countries. The ones that were "left behind" or decided not to make the immigrant trek across oceans to the US. The vast majority of these individual ethnics appear not to live in such oppulent conditions in their own countries.
In some cases its fairly easy to deduce how the rest of the populations are doing.
Nigerians, Iranians, Lebanese, Indians, and Cubans. The vast majorities of these two ethnics live in near 3rd world poverty back home in Nigeria, Iran, Lebanon, India, and Cuba with the Chinese and Jews being the eternal wild cards (or jokers) in the deck.
Mormons, meanwhile, are the only homegrown US based successful minority on Chua's list.
"But what is remarkable is how disparate the culturally successful groups they identify are – Jews, Chinese, Indians, Mormons, Iranians, Lebanese, Nigerians, Cubans. And it is demonstrable that most of the successful groups identified here were elites selected from the parent populations as a combined result of politics at home and immigration policy in the U.S."
This suggests that our legal immigration system is, de facto, meritocratic. Is this true? Or does this just represent the first stage of the sequence Joel Stein described with Indian immigration?
Not sure if Steve's example about Churchill really proves the point very well - instead it makes a point about the limits of domination by a single elite family in a country with many talented elites.
Quickly looking at the biographies of the Dukes of Marlborough shows that they retained a fairly high level of achievement in most generations - a number of active and effective military commanders, senior politicians, and even the ones who didn't have big jobs were engaged in fairly intellectual hobbies instead (astronomy, rare book collecting)
In societies with a fairly large pool of talented elites (as Britain in the 17th through 20th centuries definitely was) it’s a gamble for even a highly talented member of a famous family to become one of the most famous people in the country. The family talent may not have diminished since its founder, it’s just up against any number of other talented people, and preeminence is determined by unpredictable factors like factional struggles, luck, etc.
In contrast, somewhere with a small pool of elites you see more consistent achievement of top level positions in each generation from a single family, simply because the composition isn't there. Most of the rulers of El Salvador came from a few families, but that has less to do with the amazing talents of their families than the domination of a small elite of a small and backward country.
It will have to be George P. Bush Jr.
Idk. how does feminist liberation influence this sort of thing? I increasingly see high status men pairing off with attractive, submissive women who may not have much intelligence or drive but are willing to provide domestic bliss. The most driven, ambitious women I meet often do not have equally amazing husbands. In the past, selective breeding might have been possible because a driven, intelligent ambitious woman was unlikely to be a bitch who would castrate you after marriage. Now the odds are she will be.
John Churchill was the first Duke of Marlborough.
"Idk. how does feminist liberation influence this sort of thing? I increasingly see high status men pairing off with attractive, submissive women who may not have much intelligence or drive but are willing to provide domestic bliss."
Murray says the opposite. With 'women's liberation', lots of women go to elite colleges too and mate with elite men.
In the past, when elite colleges were male-dominated, rich guys went with sweethearts or some such.
"I increasingly see high status men pairing off with attractive, submissive women who may not have much intelligence or drive but are willing to provide domestic bliss."
Your intuition is wrong. The trend is in the other direction. Increasingly high-intelligence, high-earning, high-status men are marrying high-intelligence, high-earning and high-status women. (See study linked below).
Traditionally it was common-place for successful men to marry their beautiful but working class secretaries. Nowadays successful men basically marry other professional, successful women.
I think you have the mechanism wrong. As Charles Murray has shown in Coming Apart, the upper classes retain the most traditional families. Upper-class and educated women have by far the lowest divorce rates. Feminist liberation has done far more to change the behavior of the lower-classes than the upper-classes. That makes the beautiful, working-class secretary much less desirable.
If you want a happy, traditional and stable marriage your best bet by far is to marry an Ivy League, professional women who comes from a good background. Picking out an attractive, but uneducated woman from a lower-middle class background is a quick recipe to divorce.
"Has there been an increase in positive assortative mating? Does assortative mating contribute to household income inequality? Data from the United States Census Bureau suggests there has been a rise in assortative mating. - See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/page/2#sthash.yKshTMWk.dpuf"
Anonymous hardly said...The most driven, ambitious women I meet often do not have equally amazing husbands.
I noticed the same thing when I was working at a big ad agency. High powered female executives, who were smart and quite attractive, often had husbands who had pretty much given up whatever marginal career they had once pursued and were content to stay home and look after the kids (or as often, the dogs).
How would you go about measuring this? I strongly suspect that if you looked at long enough time-scales - centuries, probably- you'd see some marked changes in "status" over time.
Jews in the late 19th century and early 20th century America were not synonymous "high status" as they are today. Something obviously changed there. The same is true for people with Chinese surnames.
These people changed from low status to high status. Genetics has a role in that but so too did "group psychology", the loyalty to other members of the in-group and hostility to those outside it.
"But what is remarkable is how disparate the culturally successful groups they identify are – Jews, Chinese, Indians, Mormons, Iranians, Lebanese, Nigerians, Cubans. And it is demonstrable that most of the successful groups identified here were elites selected from the parent populations as a combined result of politics at home and immigration policy in the U.S."
I guess Cubans outperform other Latinos, and Nigerians outperform other African immigrants.
It's like there are weight classes in boxing. Jews are in the super heavy weight class of power.
Cubans may be in the welterweight division, but they beat all contenders(among Hispanics).
Nigerians are in the light-weight division, and they beat all the other Negroes(at least in America). Maybe because Nigeria is a main supplier of oil to America, its elites have a special connection to America. In contrast, it seems like we took the dregs from Somalia. Whatever the reason, Nigerian elites seem to be beating other African-immigrant elites.
Has anyone done a testing on Igbo people? Are they part Arab or white? Was there some race mixture during the slave trade days?
I think the Triple Package is useful in two ways.
1. Explanation for Jewish super power. Jews, as smart as they are, are over-achievers still. I mean a smart person can take it easy or just decide to do reasonably well and get along. But Jews are ultra-competitive and must dominate and beat all. Ebert said that if he knew more than Siskel about something, Siskel had to go out of his way to know more than Ebert. Most people would say 'what the hell, who cares', but Siskel couldn't tolerate anyone knowing more than him(at least about stuff he really cared about, and I don't think movies were it.) He had to be the smartest guy in the room. And Walter Jacobson once admitted he was maniacally ultra-competitive. He just had to know more than others and be the smartest guy in the room.
In grammar school, bunch of us goy students--even majority of Jews--took studies in stride, but there was this one Jewish girl who was OBSESSED with getting perfect grades. She once left her book in the classroom(locked after school hrs), and she broke down and began crying cuz she couldn't study that night. It was shocking to us because we would have just shrugged our shoulders and have said, 'big deal'. (Some boys took pity on her and lent her their books. I think it was really because she was really really beautiful.) So, while higher smarts accounts for higher Jewish success, their super power cannot be explained by ability alone. They have some crazy drive to be the best. And I've seen plenty of it in school and even got used to such Jews. When I later moved in circles with no Jews, it was like a culture shock because the general attitude was so much more relaxed and moderate, even among smart people.
http://youtu.be/P_V-TnaJJXQ?t=41s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK4E7mBIQEk
2. The other usefulness of Triple Package has nothing to do with gaining super power or super wealth but reversing the tendency of some groups to underachieve. While Mexers may not be made of genius material, there is no doubt that many of them are serious underachievers; they punching below their weight. So, even if most Mexers are not Ivy League material, a good number of them can do pretty well if they put their mind to it. So, how can Tres Packez work for them? They need a deeper historical sense, if only to fend off the trashy effect of popular culture. They need to feel some shame over their scandalous underachievement. And they need to go easy on tacos and tequila and read some books.
So, Triple Package may explain the over-achievement among Jews and may reverse the underachievement among Mexers.
Steve, I love how you acknowledge the role that women play in making families strong. You mentioned something about it the other day regarding a Jane Eyre novel, I believe, where you said the mother of her daughters weren't that bright and didn't navigate social waters very well. As a result the girls didn't marry very well, or something like that.
You seem to take a pretty unique view on this. Do feminists ever mention this role that women often play in determining their families' fortunes? Some women really are just dynamos, with or without careers.
William Kristol had to purge the GOP of 'Arabists'.
They must wipe out all.
I would like to make a few points here.
1. One fact that is likely to influence the status of Jewish Americans and similar slightly inbred groups is that they are less and less likely to marry other Jews, if what I have read is correct. When you marry for 'love' rather than a person of whom your community and parents approve, all sorts of strange and wonderful/terrible things happen.
2. 'Nigerian', 'Indian' and so forth are virtually meaningless words in their own countries, where the first question someone would ask about the successful ones is 'what is their tribe?' in NIgeria, or 'what is their caste?' in India. I would guess that the successful Nigerians tend to be Ibo, the people who tried to break free from Nigeria in the Biafran war, and were not allowed to do so. I was once told, and I don't know if it's true, that they were the 'Jews' of Nigeria, having a habit of banding together in their villages to send their brightest children to university in Britain.
3. It is possible that the reason that groups like the Mormons are so successful in modern America is that their families tend to stay intact. The toll taken on children's achievement by parental divorce, and other family irregularities like voluntary single parenthood, is tremendous.
4. This is related to point 3: I was a 'human biodiversity' skeptic for a long time, but have largely changed my mind, except for one issue. I still can't believe that the way parents raise their children has no impact on their futures. Divorce, and the combination of neglect and spoiling that it tends to encourage in parents, and deliberate single parenthood that makes children mere aids to parental happiness, have a flattening impact on children's achievement. They spend all their energy on sustaining their own or their parents' emotional stability, rather than going for the gold.
5. Yes, I know that people in 17th century Europe had it harder than the Western world's lost young people today - but at least our ancestors knew that being an orphan, going hungry, or similar misfortunes, were something their parents could not help. Even today, the children of widows/widowers seem to fare better in life than the children of divorced or never-married parents.
Alias Clio
"This suggests that our legal immigration system is, de facto, meritocratic. Is this true? Or does this just represent the first stage of the sequence Joel Stein described with Indian immigration?" - Chain migration doesn't kick in immediately, and obviously 7 successive amnesties gave it a shot in the arm.
Are Mormons these days that impressive? There was a kind of Mormon enlightenment that characterized by Inventor John Browning and self taught engineer and physicist Philo Farnsworth. These days who is there? Any real big brains or just some grubby CEO/Finance types. Any real innovation.
Progressive blogger conducts friendly, deferential interview with a guy explaining that Social Darwinists were probably right about the superior biological fitness of the ruling classes.
Brave Old World, you guys.
"Jews in the late 19th century and early 20th century America were not synonymous "high status" as they are today"
There weren't that many Jews in America until the immigration wave of the lath 19th century. And then after that it still takes a generation for a group to integrate past immigrant status.
In Europe Jews had been wealthy for quite some time. The Rothschilds were the richest men in the world by 1815. Even earlier than that Frederick the Great invited large numbers of Jews to settle in Prussia in the mid-1700s, in order to finance his wars of expansion. In Germany Jews held a status of well-to-do Burghers since at least the 15th century.
"But what is remarkable is how disparate the culturally successful groups they identify are – Jews, Chinese, Indians, Mormons, Iranians, Lebanese, Nigerians, Cubans. And it is demonstrable that most of the successful groups identified here were elites selected from the parent populations as a combined result of politics at home and immigration policy in the U.S"
The academic performance of Chinese immigrants hailing from lower socio-economic backgrounds is roughly commensurate with that of their more affluent co-ethnics.
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2011/feb/07/chinese-children-school-do-well
One flaw I see is survivor bias. The British Royal system has survived as have Thialand and Japan.
How about Russian or French royal families. How are the Bourbons doing, or the Bonapartes? Or the House of Orleans.
By definition the British royals have achieved something just by surviving.
There weren't that many Jews in America until the immigration wave of the lath 19th century. And then after that it still takes a generation for a group to integrate past immigrant status.
Which is completely besides the point - they were not high status. The proposed theory suggests that they were.
The Rothschilds were the richest men in the world by 1815.
That's like saying the Protestants were rich, because look at JP Morgan. The Jews who immigrated to the US were low status, lower-middle-class people. Their descendants are not. Therefore the theory is flawed, QED.
"Has anyone done a testing on Igbo people? Are they part Arab or white? Was there some race mixture during the slave trade days? "
++++++++++++++++++++
The Igbos I share with on 23andme all test 100% Sub Saharan Africa. My understanding is that Igbos were early adopters of British education using it to rise within the colonial hierarchy.
In 19th Century America, Sephardic Jews, such as Judah P. Benjamin of the Confederate Government, and German Jews, such as the Lehman Bros., Goldman Sachs, and Kuhn, Loeb, tended to be prosperous and well-respected. Some of Chua's 8 minority groups resemble German Jews.
Sephardic and German Jews often resented the huge influx of poorer, less refined Eastern European Jews in the late 19th Century.
The current king of Spain is a Bourbon, so I guess they're doing okay.
A Loeb was in my mother's retriever club in Westchester, NY when she was growing up.
The screenplay to Oliver Stone's Wall Street sequel was written by a Loeb and a Schiff. (The joke is that Jacob Schiff was the dominant figure in Kuhn, Loeb more than a century ago, when Kuhn, Loeb was perhaps the second strongest house on Wall Street behind only Morgan.)
I like to stay on-topic just to show that on iSteve it can be done, but nah, I'm going to go off on a tangent. Albeit one our host himself went off on: The Third World War, a book I thought nobody else had ever read. I found it a fine entertainment. And not just because the opening battle was in Slovenia. I cannot remember why the authors thought that is where the affair would start. Perhaps because Slovenia borders Austria. I guess Austria and Slovenia were considered...dramatic back then. Well, maybe they were, given that Islamic places nowadays, with all their shuffling idle males, are themselves considered exciting.
Interesting. Another prominent 19th Century investment bank founded by German Jews was Seligman, which still exists as an asset management company. I had a meeting in their New York office once.
Please do a book review of The Third World War: August 1985
Great book.
The Spanish royal family is pretty close to being dethroned less than a generation after they were returned to the throne by the efforts of Franco. I know you were tying to be cute but come on.
"Close to bring dethroned"? Based on what? Just admit that you forgot they were Bourbons and move on.
>>>DR said...
""Your intuition is wrong. The trend is in the other direction. Increasingly high-intelligence, high-earning, high-status men are marrying high-intelligence, high-earning and high-status women."""
But they still get divorced. The mid life crisis also affected the high enders as well and they generally don't go off with their wife's best friends of their same age. Hence the term "trophy" wife for these ultra super competitors in the workplace. What is a trophy but an important acutrement for these high-status seekers.
""Traditionally it was common-place for successful men to marry their beautiful but working class secretaries.""
In times past that's exactly how it was.
"""Nowadays successful men basically marry other professional, successful women.""""
Yes they certainly do. For their FIRST wife that is.
""As Charles Murray has shown in Coming Apart, the upper classes retain the most traditional families. Upper-class and educated women have by far the lowest divorce rates.""
You have to break this further down by specifics. By most measures, Hollywood, both the industry at large as well as the microcosm of the talent, is considered to be within the top 1-5% of total income earners. Hollywood has one of the worst levels for stable marriages (those who do actually get married) while ironically those at the lower levels of the industry (tradesmen and crew) tend to have somewhat better levels of stable marriages and families.
And these days Hollywood, both at the executive level as well as at the talent level, tend to come from a more elite and better educated background as compared to a couple of generations ago.
Bottom line: Hollywood has the politics of modern feminism but the income levels of Charles Murray's super zip codes.
We could also include other professions within the top 1% of income earners such as professional athletes. NYTimes study a few yrs back made the case that the divorce rate among professional athletes is between 60-80% and that is exceedingly high.
"""If you want a happy, traditional and stable marriage your best bet by far is to marry an Ivy League, professional women who comes from a good background."""
Certainly agreed that this is the case. And this is how it generally works.....for the first marriages.
"""Picking out an attractive, but uneducated woman from a lower-middle class background is a quick recipe to divorce.""""
Aside from working for the elite businessmen as their personal secretaries there are fewer and fewer opportunities for high status men to come into direct contact with such women and women of these backgrounds today do not seem to want to work in these type of professions to the extent that they once did.
Having said that, it is important to remember:
FACT: High status income earners tend to want to have a greater drive and determination than the average shlub working 8hr days. They have higher amounts of testosterone, greater drive, greater levels of confidence etc. and the one thing that these leaders are concerned with is personal image. If their wives look "old", well they are no different than others in this manner.
Just look at history. For the most part, those at the economic, social status top did not always have long lasting marriages or if they did, they had a few mistresses on the side, something of which DR neglects to concede, namely, that the top income earners do not still have mistresses since it is easier to fool around then to split up the fortune in a costly legal battle. It is somewhat naive to assume that they do not still revert to behaviors that they have always displayed in their private lives merely because we don't hear about it. But perhaps due to the internet, social media etc that is slowly changing.
Since the top 1% must comprise the total number of income earners within that bracket, it is impossible to ignore the FACT that Hollywood and professional athletes are both groups within this percentage as well and that both groups do NOT generally for good lasting marriages in their private lives make.
The Third World War was a great book ... really a more technically rigorous forerunner of Clancy's popular Red Storm Rising, which came out a few years later. It's interesting that both books had rather implausible happy endings, but The Third World War did have a limited nuclear exchange that both sides backed away from. At least that's my memory of it.
"Since the top 1% must comprise the total number of income earners within that bracket, it is impossible to ignore the FACT that Hollywood and professional athletes are both groups within this percentage as well and that both groups do NOT generally for good lasting marriages in their private lives make."
Hollywood actors, much like professional athletes and musicians, are basically high proles. In addition their proportion of the global elite is basically a rounding error. For example of the world's 1000+ billionaires only a handful are entertainers of any type.
Deducing the social mores of the economic elite by looking at Hollywood actors is roughly as informative as looking at lottery winners.
The vast majority of high-earning, economically successful men do not get divorced. Certainly far less than less economically successful men. Basic data backs this up. And of those that do a disproportionate number constitute those who "married down." Furthermore high-IQ people of all types age slower than low-IQ people. An educated, intelligent spouse, with minor cosmetic procedures, is likely to remain young looking even well into middle age.
Anon 5:07
Historically, European Jews have formed a middle to upper-middle class in their host countries even when no such class existed among the native ethnic groups. Any objective and knowledgeable Jew is quite willing to point this out (I first learned of it from a Steven Pinker talk).
I suspect that the reason you don't often hear about this is that mendacious, pro immigration Jews like to point to their own group's success as "evidence" that in a couple of generations, Latinos will be just like them, even when they know that this will never be the case. In fact, Mark Zuckerberg has done exactly this.
The poverty that the Ellis Island immigrants were fleeing was the exception to European Jewish history, not the rule. It also didn't help that most of these Jews came from Russia and the Austro-Hungarian empires, which weren't great places to run a business.
I'm English and 50 and I agree Thatcher (her married name) sounds unsmart, but she was born Roberts, which doesn't sound much better even though that is originally Norman/French. I don't think we were as name-conscious then as we are now, following exposure to a wider range of non-English names through greater exposure to American media (and immigration).
You know, I may have to concede defeat - I realized afterwards that while Heath and Wilson and so forth are not posh surnames, Thatcher is the only British prime minister to date to have a profession surname (although sometimes even those can sneak into the upper class - e.g., Cooper as the surname of the Earls of Shaftesbury, at least three of whom - the 1st, 3rd, and 7th - have been distinguished).
>>DR said:
""Hollywood actors, much like professional athletes and musicians, are basically high proles.""""
A couple generations back, they were. Not so much any longer and as before this group has to include the executive level as well (e.g. Producers; Directors) the vast majority attend film school which does take a certain level of IQ to successfully graduate from.
"""In addition their proportion of the global elite is basically a rounding error. For example of the world's 1000+ billionaires only a handful are entertainers of any type.""""
We weren't talking about the "world", just the US. Within the US, they are clearly a component of the top 1% wealth earners.
Among the world's global elites, we would have to include such diverse people as national dictators and this colorful chechen RAMZAN KADYROV, whom Steve likes to give timely updates. Also, let us not forget middle eastern oil shieks who are most certainly a part of the global elite as well as practitioners of polygamy (and mistresses) on a massive level. In this case, then, perhaps you are correct to assert that polygamists do not obtain divorces but they also don't practice monogamy so it is a standoff at best and it makes my point as well since these major players (oil shieks; Saudi princes; UAE princes; etc) are most definitely part of the global elite's wealth earners.
We are talking about the top 1% of wealth earners and while this percentage is tiny there are in fact numerous components of it; there isn't one stand pat example of the this class whether global or US.
""""Deducing the social mores of the economic elite by looking at Hollywood actors is roughly as informative as looking at lottery winners."""""
NO, the economic elite comprises the top one percent and Hollywood is most definitely a major component of this elite (it is after all a multi billion a year industry so that would in fact tend to qualify its producers and executives as members of the elite by any objective measure).
"""The vast majority of high-earning, economically successful men do not get divorced.""""
No, it depends upon which component of the top 1% that you're referring to. IF you mean that the elite scientific community and the social media moguls then you'd have a point. (e.g. Mark Zuckerberg, although he is quite young and just recently got married but who knows for certain in about 20 yrs time)
But within this same group of elites (high earning and economically successful( also contains the creative class as well and that includes Hollywood.
By any measure, no one would suggest that:
1. Hollywood is not part of the top 1% of wealth earners because they are.
2.Hollywood's personal values regarding marriage is at best, quite a mixed bag. At worst it is no different in practice than the practices of the lower classes.
"""Certainly far less than less economically successful men.""""
Perhaps and perhaps not. Again, Hollywood and Professional Athletes have to be included in the top 1% since their wealth is quite substantial. This of course will tend to throw that out of whack and make clear that just because men are high achieving and in some cases men of high IQ does not mean that they don't behave much like ordinary proles in heat because some do.
The point: The top 1% is a quite diverse field and contains several components and not just super wealthy Ward Cleavers but also mega rich Cassanovas (e.g. Donald Trump as a ready example. He is part of the top elite and 1%. Even Conservatives own Rush Limbaugh has not exhibited traditional family values either)
"""Basic data backs this up.""""
Data can be used either way and the jury is still out. The top 1% is quite diverse.
Look at history. The top 1% elite members of power and wealth in Europe and Asia, were their personal values really so pure and monogamous across the board? Answer is no.
"""And of those that do a disproportionate number constitute those who "married down."""""
Admittedly there is some truth in that statement of yours because namely, these downmarket ladies have something that these higher ups want and/or looking for. (e.g. Youth, beauty, experience, etc)
"""Furthermore high-IQ people of all types age slower than low-IQ people.""""
This is not so much to do with IQ per se as it does with handling of stress as well as for the most part income. Regardless of IQ, the wealthy by and large simply outlive the poorer members of society due to one of the basic facts of logic and common sense:
1. They have less stressful economically-based things to worry over in their daily lives. They're not too concerned about how to afford the basic amenities of life (food, clothing, how to meet bills)
2. Their confidence is for the most part in their infinite personal capacities. Their wealth is their strong tower of protection. They know that for the most part, their needs are met and if they need more they can usually obtain it at the bank or other sources of income. The poor have no such access or very little to draw upon and thus their constant worry and fear that they are "never going to make it". Worry and stress are two major aging factors upon one's health.
An educated, intelligent spouse, with minor cosmetic procedures, is likely to remain young looking even well into middle age.
Yeah, whatever. The mid life crisis affects men of all income strata. If the top 1% decide at middle age that they'd much rather prefer a trophy then they will try to obtain it with great gusto.
Again, the top one percent is quite diverse with several components so it is always useful to clarify which sub sections of the top 1% since they are not monolithic but quite diverse in outlook and personal mores. The things that they do share in common are higher than their peers IQ as well as a above normal drive to succeed in their chosen field's endeavors.
But personal values? That largely depends upon the individual member of the top 1%.
DR:
If you want a happy, traditional and stable marriage your best bet by far is to marry an Ivy League, professional women who comes from a good background.
lack of options = stability.
less pithily, later age marriages + convenience mating + less temptation + more wealth and social status to protect from the deleterious consequences of getting railroaded through the divorce court industrial complex = a certain studied contentment and resignation to lifelong monogamy with a rather uninspiring partner.
but seriously, i gotta laugh at these assortative mating cheerleaders. how many women out of the total population of women are ivy league grads? should the rest of society just give up on stable family formation? have you actually dated ivy league women? i have. a disproportionate amount of them are anhedonic ballcutters or pill popping basket cases. this is not what excites men. yeah, they won't run a DUI rap sheet or forget their birth control, but they come with their own set of problems and peculiarities, not least of which is the fact that they don't really like to "settle down" in monogamous bliss until the bloom has worn off their rose.
IQ is hardly a conscious consideration in who dates whom. i doubt upper class people are pairing off with a cold calculating eye toward expectorating PISA-mastering wunderkinds. instead what i see really happening is convenience hitching. that is, people are mostly lazy, romantically provincial, and fearful of rejection outside of their dating comfort zones and tend to hook up with those nearer to them than with those farther away. this tendency is exacerbated by the ongoing credentialist stratification.
it's time to break the assortative mating chains and return to halcyon days when men pursued love for love's sake, and sexy babes over harried doctors. bosses marrying secretaries means smart genes are spread more equitably through the population. now if we could only get the working class women to push away from the table...
If they thought they had a shot with the bosses, maybe the working class women would work harder at their appearance.
You have to also remember, that "dukedom of Marlborough" passed through female line (to his daughters) after the death of 1st duke. Therefore later dukes (whose surname is actually Spencer-Churchill) are not his descendants in male line. These kind of things are actually not very uncommon in the past. I don't know, whether they are considered at all ny Clark when he is analysing surnames or titles of the elite.
Steve: Author Irving Wallace is not a descendent of the author General Lew Wallace. No relation at all.
Funny you should mention Winston's dad Randolph Churchill, Steve.
Randolph Churchill, known colloquillaly as 'cheeky Randy' was a popular hard right Tory MP in Victorian times. He was a staunch opponent of Irish home rule and often, in the House of Commons made long, impasioned speeches denouncing the Fenians.
But he had one fatal flaw. He was syphyllitic. Tertiary syphyllitic in fact. Well known for his 'robust' and 'outspoken' demanor in the Commons, Cheeky Randy, got ever cheekier and cheekier. Apparently, he wouls stand up from the benches and start randonly shouting obscenties at opponents. At formal dinners, Cheeky Randy 'delighted' fellow diners by randomly barking like a dog, fellow guests thought that this was just another manifestation of his wacky sense of humor. At one dinner, he even jumped up on a table and started to 'scratch behind his ear' with his booted foot in the manner of a canine to peals of laughter from the half mystfied and half amused diners.
Later it was discovered that this was no 'big joke' as the rants got loonier and loonier and Cheeky Randy disappeared from public view.
Source material: 'In the Blood' by professor Steve Jones.
The poverty that the Ellis Island immigrants were fleeing was the exception to European Jewish history, not the rule.
It was largely the result of a population explosion made possible by Jewish domination in Eastern Europe; they had so many babies they couldn't feed them all.
It's my belief that the move toward assortative mating is greatly exaggerated. Assortative mating is a human constant. People want to marry their like. Arranged marriages are simply assortative matings conducted by the parents of the bride and groom. We simply didn't see assortative mating so much in the past because it was disguised by the fact that women generally weren't as educated as men and their opportunities for careers were fewer. But when bosses married their secretaries in the past, it was because 1) the secretary had gone to a Seven Sisters or similar college and was actually as educated as her husband; or 2) she was a smart young woman who couldn't afford college. There were chains of high-class secretarial schools, such as Katherine Gibbs, that catered specifically to both of the above groups, training young women in appropriate dress and decorum as well as typing and shorthand. There were also boss-secretary marriages in cases where the "boss" wasn't required to be particularly brainy but had other talents, such as salesmanship or management skills. Remember that before the computer age there were lots of secretaries, and hence, lots of bosses. Only the very most beautiful women who lacked basic brains could--and still can--attract smart upper-class and/or high-earning men--and only extremely alpha men with charm and dominance but minimal brainpower can attract women above their IQ weight. This is how it always has been.
What is happening right now isn't so much assortative mating but the inexorable disappearance of mid-level jobs enabling mid-aptitude people to lead middle-class lives. That has left a small cognitive and socioeconomic elite, a huge mass of unemployed and underemployed people, and a yawning chasm between them. Naturally the elite types wouldn't be caught dead marrying across the chasm. That, coupled with the feminism-pushed disdain of many women these days for the tasks of wives--cooking, keeping a tidy home, and so forth--has contributed to the severe shortage of viable marriages.
The most recent scholarship claims Randolph Churchill's behavior in his declining years was a brain tumor, not syphilis.
". You mentioned something about it the other day regarding a Jane Eyre novel, I believe, where you said the mother of her daughters weren't that bright and didn't navigate social waters very well. As a result the girls didn't marry very well, or something like that."
That would have been Jane Austen, probably Pride & Prejudice, not Bronte. Austen had limitless overview of societal interactions and the behavior of normal people. Bronte's heroines were so "other" (and orphaned and motherless) that any maneuvering by a parental figure would have come to naught. Their futures were secured by acts of god and nature.
Charlotte Allen, that was very well said.
"But what is remarkable is how disparate the culturally successful groups they identify are – Jews, Chinese, Indians, Mormons, Iranians, Lebanese, Nigerians, Cubans. And it is demonstrable that most of the successful groups identified here were elites selected from the parent populations as a combined result of politics at home and immigration policy in the U.S."
This suggests that our legal immigration system is, de facto, meritocratic. Is this true? Or does this just represent the first stage of the sequence Joel Stein described with Indian immigration?
Not so much, but..
-The US's has imported a mix of 64% average Chinese plus 36% business preferences (for master's degree holders, high skill engineers).
Naturally this leads to a cut above the quality of the average person in China.
And this is particularly evident in Chinese participation at elite universities and talent contetsts - if all Chinese migrants were average Chinese, it wouldn't happen like that.
Also true for the other Northeast Asian country, the Koreans, but not the Japanese, who tend to be a more average sampling of their country.
-There are some elite subclasses of particular countries (fairly sucky countries with barriers to entry to the US, like being poor or embargoes like in Cuba) who are much more able and motivated (not much fun being a Coptic Christian in Islamic Egypt) to make the jump to the US. This is particularly true for West and South Asian regions with skilled "caste" like endogamous families.
And the fact that the US isn't actually selecting them for it is kind of irrelevant. The system isn't meritocratic, but the economic realities of some countries are (for certain values of "merit").
Re: assortative marriage, it's probably happening more for income, and education, these days, as women actually *earn* income and education these days (not like in ye olde past)...
but not really for native smarts (and other positive traits), where women haven't changed from where they were around 100 years ago, and where smart women pair about as much up with smart men.
E.g. these days an educated man will marry an educated woman, and a rich man a rich woman, and that didn't happen in the past, because there were not really rich and educated women. but a smart man is no more likely to marry a smart woman than his ancestor was, as women have always been about as smart as they are.
Occupational names (Farmer, Blower, Staker, Smith, etc.,) are considered down-market, where even to this day, the more Norman names are distinctly recognized as more upper-class in the UK.
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