*The Son Also Rises* and social mobility in India

That is the new Greg Clark book and yes it is an event and yes you should buy it. Here is one passage I found of interest:

There are surprisingly few studies of social mobility in India.  Thus the two recent international surveys of social mobility…do not include India.  However, a recent study estimated the Indian intergeneration income correlation to be 0.58, making social mobility rates in India among the world’s lowest.

The estimated persistence rate for income in India of 0.58, however, is not much higher than those for the United Kingdom (0.5) or the United States (0.47).  The share of income variance in the next generation attributable to inheritance from parents in India is still only (0.58)squared, or 0.34.  This suggests that even in India, an individual’s position in the income ranks is not primarily derived from inheritance.  Thus, by conventional estimates, modern India has become a society of rapid social mobility, where three to four generations might see the elimination of all traces of millennia-old patterns of inequality.

You can buy the book here.  Here is a previous MR post on the book, there will be more to come.