Kyiv School of Economics invites to the online academic seminar "Social Mobility and Social Regimes: Intergenerational Mobility in Hungary, 1949-2017" by Pawel Bukowski (joint research with Gregory Clark, Attila Gaspar and Rita Peto), London School of Economics and Political Science.
Date&Time: November 26, 17:00 (Kyiv time).
About the speaker. Pawel Bukowski is a Research Economist at Centre for Economic Performance and Guest Teacher at the Department of Economics, London School of Economics. He holds a PhD degree in Economics from Central European University.
Dr. Pawel Bukowski's current areas of research are:
- Labour Economics: rent sharing, domestic outsourcing; workplace heterogeneity; unions; globalisation
- Inequality: the long-run evolution of income inequality; labour share; populism and inequality; inter-ethnic inequalities; social mobility.
Abstract. This paper measures social mobility rates in Hungary 1949-2017, for upper class and underclass families, using surnames to measure social status. In these years there were two very different social regimes. The first was the Hungarian People’s Republic, 1949-1989, a Communist regime with an avowed aim of favouring the working class. Then the modern liberal democracy, 1989-2020, a free-market economy. We find four surprising things. First, social mobility rates were low for both upper- and lower-class families 1949-2017, with an underlying intergenerational status correlation of 0.6-0.8. Second, social mobility rates under communism were the same as in the subsequent capitalist regime. Third, the Romani minority throughout both periods showed even lower social mobility rates. And fourth, the descendants of the noble class in Hungary in the eighteenth century were still significantly privileged 1949 and later.
This seminar is enabled by the financial support from Sweden.
