The family web

Multigenerational class persistence in elite populations

Bibliographic Data

ID4237604
AuthorsShivaun O’brien (0000-0001-8687-6377, Princeton University, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume22
Issue1
Pages1-27
Publication date2024-04-10
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocio-Economic Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1475-1461 • E-ISSN: 1475-147X
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/ser/mwad033
OpenAlexW4381848734
LanguageEN
Citations received32
References cited67

This article introduces the first-ever full kinship network of an upper-class population in a US city (n = 12 273). Multigenerational class transmission models tend to conceptualize families as father-son chains, especially for the upper class, but I systematically include women, finding that nearly 70% of Dallas high society from 1895 to 1945 was related in a single web encompassing most of the city's wealthy, powerful, and high-status people. Because elites did not always have sons, nearly three times more families persisted over the 50-year period than patrilineal measures would suggest. Almost all persistent families connected to the web, and they connected more deeply than non-persistent families. Three case studies demonstrate that women and kin ties beyond the patrilineage frequently drove elite family persistence. Upper-class populations are best understood not as collections of distinct dynasties that live or die with the success of sons, but as complex, durable family webs

Class (philosophy) · Elite · Genealogy · Geography · Kinship · Persistence (discontinuity) · Political science · Population · Social science · Sociology · Upper class · Anthropology · Computer Science · Demography · Engineering · History · Intergenerational and Educational Inequality Studies · Intergenerational Family Dynamics and Caregiving · Social and Cultural Dynamics

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