Intergenerational Mobility over Nine Generations: Evidence from Poland, 1800-1984

Marcin Wronski, SGH Warsaw School of Economics
Maria Minakowska, Independent scholar

In this paper, we utilize the mass genealogical data to measure social mobility in Poland over the last two centuries. To do so we digitized the unique dataset of elite biographies and imputed the nine generations of the Polish elite to the Poland’s largest genealogical database. We measure direct family links between the top 0.01% of the Polish society across nine generations. We find that intergenerational mobility was low and stagnant until WW I, then it gradually increased in the 20th century, especially after WW II. In the 19th century, 35-39% of the elite were direct descendants of the elite of the previous generation and 50% of the elite retained the social status for their children. In 1984, descendants of the previous generation of the elite still formed 17% of the current elite. Family formation strongly influenced the persistence of social status, especially in the case of outsiders, joining the elite as the first in their families. Our results also show that religious institutions were an important engine of social mobility.

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 Presented in Session 154. Mobility, Networks, and Housing