Abstract
Attempts to measure social mobility before the twentieth century are frequently hampered by limited data. In this paper, we use a new source – annual, matched tax censuses over more than 70 years – to calculate intragenerational income mobility within a preindustrial, settler society, the Dutch and British Cape Colony at the southern tip of Africa. Our unique source allows us to measure income mobility along several dimensions, helping to disentangle reasons for the high levels of persistence we find.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 22-51 |
| Number of pages | 30 |
| Journal | Social Science History |
| Volume | 49 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Early online date | 12 Sept 2024 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2025 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© The Author(s), 2024.
Funding
The authors would like to thank Hoyt Bleakley, Rulof Burger, Jeanne Cilliers, Bill Collins, James Fenske, Joseph Ferrie, Igor Martins, Anne McCants, Paul Rhode, Robert Ross, Marianne Wanamaker, Zach Ward, Yiling Zhao, the editors Kris Inwood and Rebecca Jean Emigh, and seminar participants at the University of Michigan, Peking University, University of Southern Denmark, Stellenbosch University, the EHDR seminar and the EHS conference for helpful comments on an earlier version. The authors would like to acknowledge financial support from the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (Cape of Good Hope Panel project: M20-0041)), the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (Biography of an Uncharted People project) and South Africa's National Research Foundation. For more information about the project, visit www.capepanel.org.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Riksbankens Jubileumsfond | M20-0041 |
| Andrew W. Mellon Foundation | |
| South Africa's National Research Foundation |
Keywords
- Cape Colony
- income mobility
- settler economies
- social mobility
- South Africa