- inequality : (C. & U.) an unfair situation, in which some groups in society have more money, opportunities, power etc than others
- THE 「Great Gatsby curve」 is the name Alan Krueger, an economic adviser to Barack Obama, gave to the relationship between income inequality and social mobility across the generations. - reckon : (Vt.) to guess a number or amount, without calculating it exactly
- Mr Corak reckons that in some places, like America and Britain, around 50% of income differences in one generation are attributable to differences in the previous generation (in more egalitarian Scandinavia, the number is less than 30%). - rosy : (adj.) seeming to offer hope of success or happines
- Even that may paint too rosy a picture - scarce : (adj.) if something is scarce, there is not very much of it available
- Good data covering three or more generations are scarce. - be bound to : to be very likely to do or feel a particular thing
- Gregory Clark, an economist at the University of California, Davis, notes that across a single generation some children of rich parents are bound to suffer random episodes of bad luck. - idiosyncrasy : (C.) an unusual or unexpected feature that something has
- idiosyncratic
- Others will choose low-pay jobs for idiosyncratic reasons, like a wish to do charitable work. - extrapolate : (Vt. & Vi.) to use facts about the present or about one thing or group to make a guess about the future or about other things or groups
- Extrapolating the resulting mobility rates across many generations gives a misleadingly sunny view of long-term equality of opportunity. - descendant : (C.) someone who is related to a person who lived a long time ago, or to a family, group of people etc that existed in the past <-> ancestor
- Indeed, it may take as long as 300-500 years for high- and low-status families to produce descendants with equal chances of being in various parts of the income spectrum. - glean : (Vt.) to find out information slowly and with difficulty
- Mr Clark confronts the lack of good data by gleaning information from rare surnames. - aristocrats : (C.) someone who belongs to the highest social class
- The unusual surnames of 17th-century aristocrats and the Latinised surnames (such as Linnaeus) adopted by highly educated 18th-century Swedes are both rare in the Swedish population as a whole. - elite : (C.) a group of people who have a lot of power and influence because they have money, knowledge, or special skills
: (adj.) an elite group contains the best, most skilled or most experienced people or members of a larger group
- By tracking the overrepresentation of those names in elite positions, he is able to work out long-run mobility rates. - disproportionate : (adj.) too much or too little in relation to something else
- If very few Britons are called Micklethwait, for example, and people with that name were disproportionately wealthy in 1800, then you can gauge long-run mobility by studying how long it takes the Micklethwait name to lose its wealth-predicting power. - gauge : (Vt.) to measure or calculate something by using a particular instrument or method
- probate : (U.) the legal process of deciding that someone's will has been properly made
- In a paper written by Mr Clark and Neil Cummins of Queens College, City University of New York, the authors use data from probate records of 19th-century estates to classify rare surnames into different wealth categories. - underlying : (adj.) the cause, idea etc that is the most important, although it is not easily noticed
- Mr Clark's conclusion is that the underlying rate of social mobility is both low and surprisingly constant across countries and eras - competence : (U.) the ability to do something well
- Such competence is potentially heritable and is reinforced by the human tendency to mate with partners of similar traits and ability. - trait : (C.) a particular quality in someone's character
- fatalistic : (adj.) believing that there is nothing you can do to prevent events from happening
- This is a distressingly fatalistic view of opportunity. - Painstaking : (adj.) very careful and thorough
- Painstaking work by Jason Long of Wheaton College and Joseph Ferrie of Northwestern University provides another perspective. - pore over sth : to read or look at something very carefully for a long time
- They have spent the past decade poring over census returns from America and Britain, identifying families with children in one count, tracking down the same children as adults in another, and thereby building up a multigenerational dataset. - census : (C.) an official process of counting a country's population and finding out about the people
- have/keep a grip on : (singular) power and control over someone or something
- The past has a tight grip on the present.
點評：為什麼我爸不是李嘉誠？
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