Your Surname Is Your Score
Six hundred years of data from Florence prove that meritocracy is a lie. The glass floor is real, and your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather’s tax return still predicts your paycheck. The Number That Should Haunt You Let us begin with a number so small that most economists would dismiss it as noise: 0.04 . That is the long-run earnings elasticity between the richest families of Florence in 1427 and their descendants alive today in 2011. It sounds like nothing. A rounding error. A statistical ghost that disappears the moment you adjust for measurement. But here is the thing. Standard economic models predict that number should be zero . Not 0.04. Zero. The reason is pure math. Over twenty generations—roughly six hundred years—every financial advantage should have been diluted into oblivion. Marriages scatter wealth. Children split inheritances. Wars, plagues, expropriations, an...