Greg Clark: Genetics and Social Mobility — #14

Gregory Clark is Distinguished Professor of Economics at UC-Davis. He is an editor of the European Review of Economic History, chair of the steering committee of the All-UC Group in Economic History, and a Research Associate of the Center for Poverty Research at Davis. He was educated at Cambridge University and received a PhD from Harvard University.

His areas of research are long-term economic growth, the wealth of nations, economic history, and social mobility.

Steve and Greg discuss:

0:00 Introduction

2:31 Background in economics and genetics

10:25 The role of genetics in determining social outcomes

16:27 Measuring social status through marriage and occupation

36:15 Assortative mating and the industrial revolution

49:38 Criticisms of empirical data, engagement on genetics and economic history

1:12:12 Heckman and Landerso study of social mobility in US vs Denmark

1:24:32 Predicting cognitive traits

1:33:26 Assortative mating and increase in population variance

Links:

For Whom the Bell Curve Tolls: A Lineage of 400,000 English Individuals 1750-2020 shows Genetics Determines most Social Outcomes
http://faculty.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/ClarkGlasgow2021.pdf

Further discussion
https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2021/03/genetic-correlation-of-social-outcomes.html

A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Farewell_to_Alms

The Son Also Rises
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Son_Also_Rises_(book)

Music used with permission from Blade Runner Blues Livestream improvisation by State Azure.

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Steve Hsu is Professor of Theoretical Physics and of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at Michigan State University. Previously, he was Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation at MSU and Director of the Institute of Theoretical Science at the University of Oregon. Hsu is a startup founder (SafeWeb, Genomic Prediction, Othram) and advisor to venture capital and other investment firms. He was educated at Caltech and Berkeley, was a Harvard Junior Fellow, and has held faculty positions at Yale, the University of Oregon, and MSU.

Please send any questions or suggestions to [email protected] or Steve on Twitter @hsu_steve.