Professor Gregory Clark is a British-born economic historian at the University of California, Davis and holds a DNRF Chair at the Danish National Research Foundation and a professor at the Historical Economics and Development Group (HEDG) at the Department of Economics, SDU. Furthermore, he is a Visiting Professor at London School of Economics (LSE) and a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at UC Davis. He is the author of A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World and The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility.
In this conversation we think out loud about:
- Why some societies became rich while others remained poor — and why it has little to do with institutions
- Why Indian cotton mills in the 1920s could not match Lancashire despite identical technology
- What Clark discovered from studying more than 422,000 English people across four centuries
- Why social mobility appears largely unchanged since the Middle Ages
- Why Denmark and Britain have almost identical mobility rates despite radically different welfare states
- Why family size, birth order, and the death of a father have no measurable effect on life outcomes
- Why the upper classes decline at the same rate the lower classes rise — and what that symmetry means
- Whether England has been a meritocracy since 1300
- Why governments may be attempting to solve problems that are largely resistant to policy
- Clark’s forthcoming book — and why it is proving difficult to publish
Find Professor Clark’s work:
- A Farewell to Alms: https://amzn.to/4vak59q
- The Son Also Rises: https://amzn.to/4okonIx
- London School of Economics: https://www.lse.ac.uk/people/greg-clark
This episode is part of the Thinking Class series on class in Britain and the West:
- Lord Tony Sewell - Life At The Bottom In Broken Britain:
- Theodore Dalrymple & Rob Henderson - They Called It Compassion:
- Michael Lind - The Real Class War:
- Jonathan Rose — What The British Working Class Lost And Who Is Responsible:
Related episodes:
- #130 Iain McGilchrist — There Is A Great Deal Of Ruin In The Western World:
- #034 Garett Jones - Why Migrants Make Countries Like The Ones The Left:
Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast on the cultural, historical, and moral forces shaping England, Britain, and the wider Western world. Hosted by John Gillam.
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