Cara Ebert, RWI – Leibniz Institute for Economic Research

"The Breakdown of the English Society of Orders: The Role of the Industrial Revolution"

Abstract

We study the role of the English Industrial Revolution in promoting social mobility and ending the society of orders: one based on rigid social categories and regulated by inherited characteristics. In a new dataset of wealth before and after the IR we find that noble and gentry titles at the top, and surnames for the entire population, explain significantly less of the variation in wealth in parts of England impacted most by the Industrial Revolution. We further show that people with surnames that were more socially mobile tended to be in the industrializing north. These results suggest that industrialization contributed to the decay of rigid social structures and enhanced social mobility.

Joint with Leander Heldring, James A. Robinson, and Sebastian Vollmer.

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Contact person: Pablo Selaya