Podcast: Thinking Class (LS 30 · TOP 10% what is this?)
Episode: #131 - Gregory Clark - Why Everything The West Believes About Social Mobility Is Wrong
Pub date: 2026-06-11

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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 Greg and I 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

Related episodes:

• #130 Iain McGilchrist — There Is A Great Deal Of Ruin In The Western World: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2277944/episodes/19292333
• #034 Garett Jones - Why Migrants Make Countries Like The Ones They Left: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2277944/episodes/15347853
• #127 Jonathan Rose — What The British Working Class Lost And Who Is Responsible: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2277944/episodes/19175544

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.

▶ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ThinkingClass
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New episodes every Thursday at 3pm.

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