by Chris Cruz
The richest families now in Florence, Italy, are descended from the wealthiest families in the city almost 600 years ago, according to new research from Italian economists.
Guglielmo Barone and Sauro Mocetti are the two economists that compared tax data in Florence from 1427 and tax data in 2011. Surnames, which are regional and based in socioeconomic status, have been traditional ways to identify family dynasties. Barone and Mocetti found that occupation, income and wealth helped to predict the same categories for descendants.
However, they found that mobility is much faster now than it was in the 15th century. They wrote that mobility may be much faster because of the explosive growth and reach of technology in the 20th century, which may contribute to why the wealthy have stayed wealthy.
“It is plausible, though we do not have direct evidence for this, that earning elasticity was close to 1 until the 20th century (before the Italian industrial revolution and mass schooling) and lower in the subsequent period,” the two economists wrote in an economics commentary website VoxEU. “This may explain why we still find some degree of inheritance of socioeconomic status after six centuries.”