In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, Daniel Freeman, Managing Editor at the IEA, speaks with Dr. Gregory Clark, Professor of Economics at the University of Southern Denmark and author of A Farewell to Alms (2008) and The Son Also Rises (2014). The conversation explores why economic growth was almost non-existent before 1800 and what set Britain on the path to the Industrial Revolution, focusing on the relationship between social mobility, fertility patterns and the gradual transformation of human behaviour over centuries.
Dr. Clark sets out his argument that pre-industrial England was characterised by a consistent fertility advantage among the upper and middle classes, with wealthier families producing significantly more surviving children than poorer ones. He explains how this demographic pressure drove the slow downward spread of commercially useful traits through the population over many generations, contributing to declining interest rates, rising literacy, and falling rates of violence long before industrialisation took hold. The discussion also covers why other societies with comparably sound institutions, including ancient Rome, Babylonia and Qing Dynasty China, never made the same transition, and what role European marriage patterns, particularly the tendency to marry later and for love rather than family arrangement, may have played in shaping the distribution of abilities within society.
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