Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 120, Issue 27, Pages -Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2300926120
Keywords
social mobility; genetic inheritance; status persistence; assortative mating
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This is a study on the lineage of 422,374 English people (from 1600 to 2022), which reveals correlations in social outcomes among relatives as distant as 4th cousins. The study shows three striking features: the strong persistence of social status across family trees, the unchanged decline in correlation with genetic distance over time, and the parallel with a simple model of additive genetic determination of status.
A lineage of 422,374 English people (1600 to 2022) contains correlations in social outcomes among relatives as distant as 4th cousins. These correlations show striking pat-terns. The first is the strong persistence of social status across family trees. Correlations decline by a factor of only 0.79 across each generation. Even fourth cousins, with a common ancestor only five generations earlier, show significant status correlations. The second remarkable feature is that the decline in correlation with genetic distance in the lineage is unchanged from 1600 to 2022. Vast social changes in England between 1600 , 2022 would have been expected to increase social mobility. Yet people in 2022 remain correlated in outcomes with their lineage relatives in exactly the same way as in preindustrial England. The third surprising feature is that the correlations parallel those of a simple model of additive genetic determination of status, with a genetic correlation in marriage of 0.57.
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