A Schumpeter Hotel? Surname Status Persistence in Sweden 1880-2016

Conventional social mobility research misses substantial inequalities of opportunity. To capture intergenerational persistence of family social status we need to move beyond parent-child associations in occupation or income. Models that incorporate surname group belonging show that families do not regress to a population mean at the speed implied by parent-child associations. Their mobility is further constrained by their ancestors’ social status as operationalized through surname group belonging. Failing to include such group-level processes, summary measures such as intergenerational elasticities in occupational status or income will overestimate the relative importance of individual effort and ability on socioeconomic outcomes. We study the inheritance of surname status as a group-level process, using full count population data for Sweden between 1880 and 2016. Surname status
persistence is almost as high in the modern Swedish welfare state as it was in preindustrial times. The status structure of surname groups converges only at a slow rate, with differences persisting over at least six generations. Modernization is not associated with lasting increases in surname mobility. As a group, families with an agricultural surname background (patronyms) experience a persistent disadvantage while noble and Roman surnames display a consistent
advantage. Hence, surname status persistence is not only an elite phenomenon, but present in all social classes.