Gregory Clark on Social Mobility, Migration, and Assortative Mating (Ep. 234 - Live at Mercatus)
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感谢赞助这份文字记录的听众，因为他们“受到泰勒思想的广度和深度的启发，以及他涵盖如此多主题的能力，我很感激他提高了我提出的问题的质量。”
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler.
大家好，欢迎回到《与泰勒对话》。
Today, I am chatting live with Greg Clark, the economic historian.
今天，我正在与经济历史学家格雷格·克拉克进行现场聊天。
I think it’s fair to say that Greg is the most interesting and most influential economic historian of the last 20 years.
我认为可以公平地说，格雷格是过去 20 年来最有趣、最有影响力的经济历史学家。
His book from 2007, A Farewell to Alms, presented a new theory of economic growth, human progress, and the Industrial Revolution.
他 2007 年出版的著作《告别施舍》提出了关于经济增长、人类进步和工业革命的新理论。
I ended up as one of the blurbers, and I called it, as I wrote in The New York Times, “the next blockbuster in economics.”
我最终成为了其中的一员，正如我在《纽约时报》上所写的那样，我称之为“经济学的下一个重磅炸弹”。
His book after that, The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility, among other things, argues that rates of social mobility have been much less, much more static, much harder to change than many people believe.
他在那之后的著作《儿子也崛起：姓氏与社会流动性的历史》等书中认为，社会流动性的比率比许多人认为的要低得多、更加静态、更难以改变。
Greg spent much of his career at UC Davis.
格雷格职业生涯的大部分时间是在加州大学戴维斯分校度过的。
He is now a professor at the University of Southern Denmark, and he hails from Scotland.
他现在是南丹麦大学的教授，来自苏格兰。
Greg, welcome.
格雷格，欢迎。
Thank you very much.
非常感谢。
Great to be here.
很高兴来到这里。
I have so many questions about your work.
我对你的工作有很多疑问。
Let me start with mobility, a point where I think we don’t agree.
让我从流动性开始，我认为我们在这一点上意见不一致。
I see mobility across freer societies as much higher than you do, and I worry that you’re treating mobility too much in terms of relative ranking.
我认为自由社会的流动性比你们高得多，而且我担心你们在相对排名方面过于重视流动性。
Your quintile — how well is that predicted by your parents’ quintile or decile of income?
你的五分之一——你父母收入的五分之一或十分之一对这一点的预测效果如何？
But if you just think of mobility as having a much better and different life, freer life than your parents, aren’t rates of social mobility just immense?
但如果你只是认为流动性意味着拥有比你父母更好、更不同、更自由的生活，那么社会流动性不是很大吗？
No. The amazing thing is, if we even go back to medieval England, rates of social mobility were just as high as they are now.
不。令人惊奇的是，如果我们回到中世纪的英国，社会流动率和现在一样高。
If you want to take these other dimensions of freedom of expression or social neighborhood that people were in, again, there’s no evidence that that has, in any sense, improved now.
如果你想考虑言论自由或人们所处的社会邻里的其他维度，那么没有证据表明现在在任何意义上已经有所改善。
People are just as divided in terms of the types of groups that they meet with as they would be 500 years ago.
正如 500 年前一样，人们对所遇到的群体类型也存在分歧。
So, I really want to stick with this idea that in a society like England, we have not in any way improved rates of social mobility in the last 300 years.
所以，我真的很想坚持这个观点，即在像英国这样的社会中，我们在过去 300 年里并没有以任何方式提高社会流动性。
That’s focusing solely on relative rankings.
这仅关注相对排名。
If I visit Liverpool, and I look at Paul McCartney’s home, I know that’s an extreme case, but in Liverpool, living standards are just much higher than they were earlier.
如果我访问利物浦，看看保罗·麦卡特尼的家，我知道这是一个极端的例子，但在利物浦，生活水平比以前高得多。
People have many more sources of freedom.
人们有更多的自由来源。
It’s true that where they fit into the deciles or other relative rankings — maybe that hasn’t changed much, but why is that the relative concept of social mobility?
确实，他们在十分位数或其他相对排名中的位置——也许没有太大变化，但为什么这是社会流动性的相对概念呢？
That’s what I don’t get.
这就是我不明白的。
It’s absolutely the case that we’re now 15 times better off than we were in 1800, but it’s still, I think, a very important feature of society and one that people are obsessed with.
确实，我们现在的生活比 1800 年好 15 倍，但我认为，这仍然是社会的一个非常重要的特征，也是人们所痴迷的一个特征。
I’m not obsessed with it.
我并不沉迷于此。
But it turns out, most people are.
但事实证明，大多数人都是这样。
I don’t think they are in America.
我不认为他们在美国。
I think they’re obsessed with the absolute living standards they enjoy — whether those go up or not — and not so much about how the person in Mississippi compares to Bill Gates.
我认为他们痴迷于自己享有的绝对生活水平——“无论这些生活水平是否提高”——而不是关心密西西比州的人与比尔·盖茨相比如何。
I think it’s exactly what people are not obsessed with.
我认为这正是人们不沉迷的。
Right.
正确的。
It’s legitimate to say I see your question, and I think it’s unimportant, but I still think it’s a fascinating feature of societies, which is how are people between generations moving in relative position within societies?
可以合理地说我看到了你的问题，而且我认为这并不重要，但我仍然认为这是社会的一个令人着迷的特征，即代际之间的人们如何在社会中处于相对地位？
The other thing I would say is that that gain in material living standards is actually, in some ways, a lot less important than you might think.
我要说的另一件事是，物质生活水平的提高实际上在某些方面没有你想象的那么重要。
I’ve gone to Dr. Johnson’s house in London from the early 18th century.
我从 18 世纪初就去过伦敦约翰逊博士的家。
I’d be perfectly happy to move in and live in that house now.
我现在非常乐意搬进那所房子并居住。
With no penicillin, no good dental care.
没有青霉素，就没有良好的牙齿护理。
Yes, there have been definite improvements in healthcare and other things.
是的，医疗保健和其他方面确实有了明显的改善。
Electricity.
电。
Right, but as I say, in some sense, you’re just saying, “Okay, I want to concentrate on growth.
是的，但正如我所说，从某种意义上说，你只是在说：“好吧，我想专注于增长。
I think that that’s the crucial element of society.
我认为这是社会的关键要素。
If all of that growth goes to 10 percent of the society and not to the rest of society, I wouldn’t care about that.” Whereas, as I say, it seems to me just in common observation, that certainly in Britain, where I come from, people do have this fascination with relative position in society, and people are obsessed about who’s going to the elite universities, who are the members of parliament, what are the backgrounds of these people.
如果所有这些增长都惠及社会的 10%，而不惠及社会的其他人，我就不会关心这一点。”然而，正如我所说，在我看来，在普遍的观察中，当然在我来自的英国，人们确实对社会中的相对地位很着迷，人们痴迷于谁会去精英大学，谁是议会成员，这些人的背景是什么。
Isn’t that the problem with Britain?
这不是英国的问题吗？
It’s an economy that has more or less falling productivity since the Great Financial Crisis.
自金融危机以来，这个经济体的生产率或多或少有所下降。
It’s far too stultified.
这太愚蠢了。
It’s too status-conscious.
这太注重地位了。
What we need to do is distract people from relative rankings and just get them thinking about the absolute size of the pie.
我们需要做的就是分散人们对相对排名的注意力，让他们思考蛋糕的绝对大小。
One of the reasons that I went to Denmark was because of the fantastic data that they have in the registered data on people’s social position in Denmark.
我去丹麦的原因之一是因为他们在丹麦人的社会地位的注册数据中拥有出色的数据。
In this new book that I just completed the draft of, one of the things that’s pointed out is social mobility rates in modern Denmark are no higher than in Britain.
在我刚刚完成草稿的这本新书中，指出的一件事是现代丹麦的社会流动率并不高于英国。
This, I believe.
这个，我相信。
It’s not correct to think of Britain as an immobile society.
将英国视为一个静止的社会是不正确的。
Aren’t they both immobile societies?
它们不都是静止的社会吗？
Denmark people — they go to the same high school, they hang out, they eat those weird fish sandwiches, and they help each other out.
丹麦人——他们上同一所高中，他们一起出去玩，他们吃那些奇怪的鱼三明治，他们互相帮助。
What you’re born into more or less determines how you, your kids, grandkids will do in Denmark.
你的出生或多或少决定了你、你的孩子、孙子们将在丹麦做什么。
I think the Danes themselves would actually think of themselves as a very mobile society.
我认为丹麦人自己实际上会认为自己是一个流动性很强的社会。
It’s a very open society.
这是一个非常开放的社会。
That’s why, as someone who’s interested in societies, it is fascinating to me that you can change so much about social structure, say, between England and Denmark, but somehow not change one basic fact, which is just how connected are people to their parents in terms of their social outcomes, and also how little influence social institutions seem to be able to have on that connection.
这就是为什么，作为一个对社会感兴趣的人，让我着迷的是，你可以对社会结构做出如此大的改变，比如在英格兰和丹麦之间，但不知何故却无法改变一个基本事实，那就是人们与父母在社会成果方面的联系有多么紧密，以及社会机构似乎对这种联系的影响力是多么小。
I actually draw from this a comforting fact, which is to say meritocracy was achieved much earlier than you might’ve expected because what you would find in a truly meritocratic society is that the only things that really determine social position are going to be people’s genetic inheritance and randomness.
事实上，我从中得出一个令人欣慰的事实，也就是说，精英政治的实现比你想象的要早得多，因为在一个真正的精英社会中，你会发现，真正决定社会地位的唯一因素是人们的基因遗传和随机性。
That status seems to have been achieved in England already by 1700.
英国似乎在 1700 年就已经达到了这种地位。
I actually draw this different lesson, which is that not only have we achieved growth in the modern world, but we’ve also achieved meritocracy hundreds of years ago.
我实际上得出了这个不同的教训，那就是我们不仅在现代世界实现了增长，而且在数百年前就实现了精英管理。
I would think that a lot of people would regard that as a pretty radical claim about the nature of modern society despite your skepticism.
我认为，尽管你对此表示怀疑，但很多人都会认为这是对现代社会本质的相当激进的主张。
COWEN: Let me give you a different reading of your work that probably you’ll disagree with, but let me get your reaction.
COWEN：让我对你的作品进行不同的解读，你可能会不同意，但让我听听你的反应。
This I call Strauss plus Bryan Caplan.
我称之为施特劳斯和布莱恩·卡普兰。
One way of reading Greg Clark is that he shows that social mobility is quite high, but the only path to social mobility is geographically moving around.
解读格雷格·克拉克的一种方式是，他表明社会流动性相当高，但社会流动性的唯一途径是地理上的流动。
A simple example: I think median household income for families from India that have come to America — it’s $158,000 a year, which is remarkably high.
一个简单的例子：我认为来到美国的印度家庭的家庭收入中位数是每年 158,000 美元，非常高。
Whatever it was in India, it was not close to that.
无论印度的情况如何，都远非如此。
So, they moved; they’re doing incredibly well.
于是，他们搬家了；他们做得非常好。
When people move from, say, the rural South to the Northeast during the Great Migration, they do much better.
当人们在大迁徙期间从南方农村迁移到东北部时，他们的表现要好得多。
That physical mobility is what works, and it’s what overturns these hierarchies.
身体的移动性才是有效的，也是推翻这些等级制度的原因。
A lot of your data sets seem to be about times and places where not that many people are moving a lot, but mobility simply works.
你们的很多数据集似乎都是关于时间和地点的，在这些时间和地点，没有多少人经常移动，但移动性确实有效。
Physical mobility.
身体活动能力。
True or false?
是真是假？
Absolutely.
绝对地。
That also clearly says that there are cultural and social constraints in society that allow some of them to be very high-performing and some of them to be less well-performing.
这也清楚地表明，社会中存在文化和社会限制，使得一些人表现非常出色，而另一些人表现较差。
But then, what’s interesting and remarkable is that in this new manuscript, we can actually trace people who move from Britain to Australia, Canada, and the United States.
但有趣且值得注意的是，在这份新手稿中，我们实际上可以追踪从英国移居到澳大利亚、加拿大和美国的人们。
What’s interesting is that their material welfare increases very significantly, but their relative social position doesn’t change and somehow is preserved across these different societies.
有趣的是，他们的物质福利显着增加，但他们的相对社会地位并没有改变，并且在不同的社会中以某种方式得以保留。
The things that are holding back societies as a whole — it’s very interesting that it doesn’t seem to affect relative social position.
阻碍整个社会发展的因素 ——非常有趣的是，它似乎并不影响相对社会地位。
As I say, that’s why I’m a relativist and you’re an absolutist.
正如我所说，这就是为什么我是相对主义者而你是绝对主义者。
COWEN: Let me tell you if this further inference would be justified.
COWEN：让我告诉你这个进一步的推论是否合理。
You’re not a pessimist about the importance of environment.
对于环境的重要性，您并不是悲观主义者。
You’re a pessimist about the ability to reshape an environment when most of the people are still around.
当大多数人还存在时，你对重塑环境的能力持悲观态度。
True or false?
是真是假？
Yes.
是的。
As I say —
正如我所说 ——
The environment really matters.
环境确实很重要。
It’s just hard to change it.
只是很难改变它。
In that sense, the weight you assign to genes is still up in the air because when we see the environment change a lot with migration, the effects matter a lot.
从这个意义上说，你赋予基因的权重仍然悬而未决，因为当我们看到环境因迁徙而发生很大变化时，其影响就非常重要。
Yes, but it seems to me that societies come with different constraints, but what’s very interesting is that people’s ability to operate within those constraints seems undiminished across different societies, and the same factors seem to determine that.
是的，但在我看来，不同的社会有不同的限制，但非常有趣的是，在不同的社会中，人们在这些限制下运作的能力似乎并没有减弱，而且似乎是相同的因素决定了这一点。
I’ve actually done some work on Hungary under Communism, where again, using surnames, we can identify who were the descendants of the previous elite.
实际上，我对共产主义统治下的匈牙利做了一些研究，再次利用姓氏，我们可以识别谁是以前精英的后裔。
Interestingly, in things like admission to medical school, it didn’t change under the system of Communism.
有趣的是，像进入医学院这样的事情，在共产主义制度下并没有改变。
The same elites preserved themselves.
同样的精英们保存了自己。
In the political sphere, that elite disappeared from parliament for a while.
在政治领域，这些精英一度从议会中消失。
When the free-market system was restored, that elite just emerged fully again into the political sphere.
当自由市场体系恢复时，精英们才再次全面进入政治领域。
What’s interesting, as I say, is you can change the overall constraints on the society but it still is interesting that relative position seems to be determined in some very physics-like way within different societies.
正如我所说，有趣的是你可以改变对社会的整体约束，但有趣的是，不同社会中的相对位置似乎是以某种非常类似于物理学的方式决定的。
On assortative mating
关于选型交配
How do you think about the social returns to more or less assortative mating?
您如何看待或多或少选型交配的社会回报？
Say in the United States — do we have too much of it, too little of it?
比如说在美国——“我们拥有的东西是太多还是太少了？”
If we had more of it, you’d have, say, very smart or determined people marrying those like them, and you might end up with more innovation from their children and grandchildren.
如果我们有更多这样的东西，你就会有，比如说，非常聪明或坚定的人与像他们这样的人结婚，你最终可能会从他们的子孙那里得到更多的创新。
But you might also be messing with what you would call the epistemic quality of the median voter.
但你也可能会搞乱所谓的中位选民的认知质量。
There’s this trade-off.
这是一个权衡。
How do you think about that?
您对此有何看法？
What side of the margin are we at?
我们处于边缘的哪一边？
Assortative mating turns out to be a fascinating phenomenon, and in this new book, we actually have records of 1.7 million marriages in England from 1837 until now.
事实证明，选型交配是一种令人着迷的现象，在这本新书中，我们实际上记录了从 1837 年至今英国 170 万次婚姻的记录。
What is astonishing in England is the degree to which people end up assorting in marriage so that basically, they’re matching with people that are as close to them, essentially genetically, as their siblings in marriage.
在英国，令人惊讶的是人们最终在婚姻中进行匹配的程度，基本上，他们会与那些在基因上与他们的婚姻中的兄弟姐妹一样接近的人进行匹配。
It’s really interesting because people could mate in any way.
这真的很有趣，因为人们可以以任何方式交配。
You could think I want the tallest person, the handsomest person, the youngest person, but for some reason, consistently, people seem to want to match to people who are close in social status.
你可能会认为我想要最高的人、最英俊的人、最年轻的人，但出于某种原因，人们似乎一直想要与社会地位接近的人匹配。
Now that doesn’t affect anything about the average level of ability in a society, but if it’s consistently followed over generations, it will widen the distribution of ability.
现在这对一个社会的平均能力水平没有任何影响，但如果几代人持续遵循这一点，它将扩大能力的分布。
Yes, and are we doing too much of that or too little of it in the United States?
是的，我们在美国这样做是太多了还是太少了？
It depends what your view is.
这取决于你的观点是什么。
If you think that the engine of high-tech society now, like the United States, is the top 1 percent or 5 percent of the ability distribution, then you would say the more assortative is mating, the more people will be in that extreme and the greater will be economic growth.
如果你认为现在高科技社会的引擎，像美国一样，是能力分布的前1%或5%，那么你会说交配越多样化，越多的人会处于这种极端，经济增长就会越大。
In the new book, I actually speculate about, was assortative mating in Northern Europe a discovery of the late Middle Ages that actually then helped propel things like the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, because as I say, it’s a remarkably constant feature of British society.
在这本新书中，我实际上推测，北欧的选型交配是中世纪晚期的一个发现，它实际上帮助推动了科学革命、启蒙运动、工业革命等事物，因为正如我所说，这是英国社会的一个非常持续的特征。
We can only trace it back to about 1750, the actual degree of assortativeness.
我们只能追溯到1750年左右，也就是实际的选型程度。
So, in that sense, you can’t have too much if that’s your view about how society operates.
所以，从这个意义上说，如果这就是你对社会运作方式的看法，你就不能拥有太多。
At least we could have more of it.
至少我们可以拥有更多。
There might be some margin where you’d have too much.
可能会有一些余量，你可能有太多的余量。
But it does produce more inequality, so if you’re worried about inequality in society, you don’t want assortative mating.
但它确实会产生更多的不平等，所以如果你担心社会不平等，你就不会想要选型交配。
The one way to correct a lot of inequality would just be to have much more random matching.
纠正大量不平等的一种方法就是进行更多的随机匹配。
One of the remarkable things about Denmark is, education is essentially free until you’re age 24.
丹麦最引人注目的事情之一是，24 岁之前的教育基本上是免费的。
They give you subsidies for your living expenses, for childcare provision — it’s all available.
他们给你生活费补贴、儿童保育费补贴——这一切都有。
They’ve compressed the income distribution quite sharply.
他们大幅压缩了收入分配。
There is this periodic survey of how well students do, the PISA measures.
有一项针对学生表现的定期调查，即 PISA 衡量标准。
Nordic countries have not reduced the inequality of PISA measures compared to much more unequal societies like the United States.
与美国等不平等程度更高的社会相比，北欧国家并没有减少 PISA 衡量标准中的不平等现象。
Again, it’s just interesting that a high degree of inequality is still found within these societies.
同样，有趣的是，这些社会中仍然存在高度不平等。
It turns out that in Nordic societies, people are mating again very strongly assortatively even now.
事实证明，在北欧社会，即使是现在，人们的交配也再次出现了非常强烈的选型。
That is the thing that you would worry more about, that there is going to be this trade-off between assortative mating and the degree of inequality in a society.
这是你更担心的事情，即选型交配和社会不平等程度之间会存在这种权衡。
Let’s say the Spaniards and others — they come to the New World.
假设西班牙人和其他人来到了新大陆。
There’s a lot of pairing off.
有很多配对。
Some of it is violent and coercive, of course, but a lot of it seems more random than what you might expect from Jane Austen’s British Victorian society.
当然，其中一些是暴力和胁迫的，但很多似乎比你对简·奥斯汀的英国维多利亚社会的预期更加随机。
What’s the implied prediction about what results from that?
对由此产生的结果的隐含预测是什么？
There’s going to be less assortative state of mating, at least for a while, right?
至少在一段时间内，交配的选型状态将会减少，对吗？
Yes.
是的。
The implication would be you’ll get just a narrow distribution of abilities.
这意味着你只会获得狭窄的能力分布。
But do we see that?
但我们看到了吗？
It seems we see very high inequality in those societies.
我们似乎看到这些社会中的不平等现象非常严重。
Remember, there’s potentially a difference between inequality based on things like wealth ownership and inequality in abilities or educational potential that you would see within a society.
请记住，基于财富所有权等方面的不平等与您在社会中看到的能力或教育潜力的不平等之间可能存在差异。
Definitely, there’s clearly going to be this association between how assortative marriage is and how much inequality you get.
当然，选型婚姻的程度和不平等程度之间显然存在这种联系。
By the way, Neil Cummins and I have a paper that just came out in PLOS One, which is about hypergamy, which is the very common idea that women tend to marry up because men value physical appearance more than women do, and there’s this trade-off that exists in the marriage market.
顺便说一句，尼尔·康明斯和我刚刚在 PLOS One 上发表了一篇关于一夫多妻制的论文，这是一种非常普遍的观点，即女性倾向于结婚，因为男性比女性更看重外表，而婚姻市场中存在这种权衡。
Interestingly, for England, going back to 1837, we claim that there is no hypergamy, that essentially men and women end up matching in social status in marriage.
有趣的是，对于英国来说，追溯到 1837 年，我们声称不存在一夫多妻制，本质上男人和女人最终在婚姻中的社会地位是匹配的。
It seems to be that it’s just a complete dominance of social status in determining unions within this society.
在这个社会中，似乎完全是社会地位决定了工会。
For England, I believe that.
对于英格兰来说，我相信这一点。
You think it’s true for most of the world?
你认为这对世界上大多数人来说都是如此吗？
The interesting question is, it’s definitely true for a bunch of earlier societies that the matching was much less tight.
有趣的问题是，对于许多早期社会来说，匹配确实不那么严格。
For example, there’s a whole bunch of earlier societies where cousin marriage was a very important form of marriage.
例如，在许多早期社会中，表亲婚姻是一种非常重要的婚姻形式。
The problem with cousin marriage for assortativeness is most people don’t have a lot of cousins at the right age and gender, so it ends up that you have to marry a random cousin.
表兄弟结婚的选型问题是，大多数人没有很多年龄和性别合适的表兄弟，所以最终你不得不嫁给一个随机的表兄弟。
It turns out that the modern British, or even the 19th century British, are matching much more tightly in terms of marriage than would be the case if you just matched to a random cousin.
事实证明，现代英国人，甚至是 19 世纪的英国人，在婚姻方面的匹配程度比随机匹配一个表亲的情况要紧密得多。
In your view, has cousin marriage been a big problem for the Arab Middle East, that you end up with something that’s too clannish?
在您看来，表亲婚姻对于阿拉伯中东地区来说是一个大问题吗？最终会导致一些过于宗族的事情吗？
What I would say is, if it’s systematically carried out, it should lead to a reduction in the distribution of abilities within a society compared to the very assortative Northern European pattern or other patterns.
我想说的是，如果系统地实施，与非常多样化的北欧模式或其他模式相比，它应该会导致社会内能力分配的减少。
I honestly don’t know whether it actually leads to these other problems in terms of the clannishness of society.
老实说，我不知道这是否真的会导致社会的宗派性方面的其他问题。
Potentially, yes, but it’s not something that I’ve actually studied yet.
是的，有可能，但这还不是我真正研究过的东西。
On India’s caste system
关于印度的种姓制度
It at least seems that today, something about the caste system is finally paying off for India.
至少今天看来，种姓制度终于给印度带来了回报。
From South India, you have these incredible chess players — that’s g-loaded, CEOs in tech.
来自印度南部的这些令人难以置信的棋手 ——他们是技术界的首席执行官。
Why is it that now the caste system, in this one particular way, is succeeding, but in earlier times, you don’t see anything nearly as comparable?
为什么现在的种姓制度以这种特殊的方式取得了成功，但在早期，你看不到任何类似的东西？
What has changed?
发生了什么变化？
What’s the environmental change?
环境有什么变化？
And doesn’t that mean environment really, really matters?
这难道不意味着环境真的非常重要吗？
It’s not all just genes.
这不仅仅是基因。
Oh, no. In terms of overall economic performance, in my earlier book, A Farewell to Alms, it said there’s essentially only two great problems in the economic history of the world.
哦，不。就整体经济表现而言，我在之前的著作《告别施舍》中说，世界经济史上本质上只有两个大问题。
The first is the incredible long delay in the arrival of the Industrial Revolution.
首先是工业革命的到来令人难以置信的长期延迟。
Then the second puzzle is the incredible divergence of society since the Industrial Revolution, where now you get these differences of about 50 or 60 to 1 in material living standards.
第二个难题是自工业革命以来社会令人难以置信的差异，现在物质生活水平的差异约为 50 或 60 比 1。
This is really illustrated when you look at a society like India where, because of this caste system, you had this super elite, the Brahmin caste, which preserved itself for more than a thousand years.
当你看看像印度这样的社会时，这一点就得到了真正的说明，在那里，由于这种种姓制度，你有这个超级精英，即婆罗门种姓，它保存了一千多年。
Clearly, now you see when these people move to the United States, who are the new elite of the United States?
显然，现在你看这些人搬到美国后，谁是美国的新精英？
These are Indian immigrants to the United States who are a super elite within this society.
这些是美国的印度移民，他们是这个社会的超级精英。
Then the stunning puzzle is, why did all of that talent coexist with an incredibly stagnant Indian economy?
那么令人震惊的谜题是，为什么所有这些人才与极其停滞的印度经济共存？
Stagnant even once it was opened up to the forces of the modern market by the British, even once you had brought in British civil institutions, British legal institutions, free trade, free capital markets, low interest rates.
即使一旦英国向现代市场的力量开放，即使引入了英国民事机构、英国法律机构、自由贸易、自由资本市场和低利率，它仍然停滞不前。
This is one of the stunning puzzles of the modern world.
这是现代世界令人惊叹的谜题之一。
Even though I write about that in that earlier book, I have to confess I have no idea why a society like that can remain so unchanged after the arrival of the British and not actually start transforming itself until the last 20 or 30 years.
尽管我在那本早期的书中写到了这一点，但我不得不承认，我不知道为什么这样的社会在英国人到来后仍然保持如此不变，直到最近 20 或 30 年才真正开始转变。
I don’t doubt the answer is complex, but isn’t part of it pretty straightforward and it has to do with state capacity?
我毫不怀疑答案很复杂，但其中一部分不是很简单并且与国家能力有关吗？
The British only invested in a few kinds of public goods, ones that would help them either trade with the country or defend it.
英国人只投资于几种公共产品，这些公共产品可以帮助他们与国家进行贸易或保卫国家。
There was very little investment in human capital.
人力资本投资很少。
In some ways, it was nominally somewhat free, but in terms of actual market size and scale and building up of high-trust institutions, the British were arguably even a negative influence.
从某些方面来说，它名义上是有点自由的，但就实际市场规模和规模以及高信任度机构的建设而言，英国甚至可以说是一种负面影响。
Rates of growth are pretty low.
增长率相当低。
Even under Nehru’s socialism, India has a higher rate of growth.
即使在尼赫鲁的社会主义统治下，印度的增长率也更高。
Why isn’t that, again, far from a complete resolution of the puzzle, but a pretty simple first-order answer?
为什么这不是一个完整的谜题解决方案，而是一个非常简单的一阶答案？
It might not seem that the British contributed much, but if you even look at the Anglo-Indian group that developed in India, that was massive.
英国人的贡献可能看起来并不大，但如果你看看在印度发展起来的英印集团，那就是巨大的。
Think about how big India is relative to Britain.
想想印度相对于英国有多大。
This was a massive potential entrepreneurial class in India, and the British also had a policy that allowed absolutely free migration of entrepreneurs into India.
这是印度一个巨大的潜在企业家阶层，英国也有允许企业家绝对自由移民印度的政策。
The Bombay textile industry — something like 10 percent of it was owned by a Jewish family that had come from Iraq, the Sassoon family.
孟买纺织业——大约 10% 的股份由来自伊拉克的犹太家族沙逊家族拥有。
The British, as I say, welcomed these entrepreneurs.
正如我所说，英国人欢迎这些企业家。
They encouraged free trade.
他们鼓励自由贸易。
I don’t think you could underplay how significant an intervention that was by the British in that society.
我认为你不能低估英国人对那个社会的干预有多么重要。
Everyone is tending to judge India now by the results, but even Karl Marx, writing in the mid-19th century, confidently predicted that the British had created the next industrial colossus in India and that that would overwhelm the British in turn.
现在每个人都倾向于根据结果来判断印度，但即使是卡尔·马克思在 19 世纪中叶写作时也自信地预测，英国人已经在印度创造了下一个工业巨头，而这将反过来压倒英国人。
It is one of the great puzzles of history, why India never developed under the British.
为什么印度在英国统治下从未发展起来，这是历史上最大的谜团之一。
It just seemed that this was the path that had been set up.
看来，这就是已经定好的路了。
Could it have been too much assortative mating that there’s something to an O-ring model, where for a lot of production processes, it’s the weakest link, the least well-educated link, the biggest source of social disorder, that disrupts a town, a village, a firm for everyone else, and in terms of the O-ring model, India back then just wasn’t doing well at all.
难道O型圈模式有什么东西，它是最薄弱的环节，是教育程度最低的环节，是社会混乱的最大根源，它扰乱了一个城镇、一个村庄、一个公司的其他所有人，就O型圈模式而言，当时的印度根本就做得不好。
Yes, except I’ve studied a lot in my earlier life on the cotton textile industry, and it turns out, as I say, that was one of the major industries of the 19th century.
是的，除了我早年对棉纺织业进行了大量研究，结果正如我所说，那是 19 世纪的主要产业之一。
You could run an entire cotton mill with three skilled managers, and the tasks of people at the lower level there are extremely simple, don’t require literacy.
你可以用三个熟练的管理人员来经营整个棉纺厂，而底层人员的任务非常简单，不需要识字。
In Japan, they were performed by 14- and 16-year-old girls with high competence, fantastic results.
在日本，表演者都是14岁和16岁的女孩，她们水平很高，成绩也很出色。
Now, when we look at modern manufacturing processes, they can often involve high levels of performance by workers and huge costs if workers fail to perform.
现在，当我们审视现代制造流程时，它们通常涉及工人的高水平绩效，如果工人未能绩效，则会产生巨大的成本。
It looked like, in the 19th century, you had these failure-resistant techniques.
看起来，在 19 世纪，你就拥有了这些抗失败的技术。
Someone in a spinning mill — if they mess up, the thread breaks more often, but that can all be repaired, and it’s all observable.
纺纱厂里的某个人——如果他们搞砸了，线会更频繁地断裂，但这都是可以修复的，而且都是可以观察到的。
In modern high-tech manufacturing, you can see this problem, but not in 19th-century India.
在现代高科技制造业中，你可以看到这个问题，但在19世纪的印度却看不到。
I still see —
我仍然看到 —
But there’s a whole supply chain.
但有一个完整的供应链。
There’s the networks and the search of getting the right people for those jobs.
有网络和寻找合适的人来从事这些工作。
Maybe it involves a lot of different moving parts and not just what’s under the roof of the factory.
也许它涉及许多不同的移动部件，而不仅仅是工厂屋顶下的部件。
Right.
正确的。
I think some modern Indian, a very rich entrepreneur, should have a prize that would be devoted to someone who could explain why India didn’t successfully industrialize under the British in the 19th century.
我认为一些现代印度人，一位非常富有的企业家，应该获得一个奖项，专门授予那些能够解释为什么印度在 19 世纪英国统治下没有成功实现工业化的人。
Because it’s one of those stunning mysteries of history.
因为这是历史上令人惊叹的谜团之一。
As I say, it’s easy for people just to say, “Oh, it’s the sclerotic English institutions.
正如我所说，人们很容易说：“哦，这是僵化的英国机构。
It’s the arrogance of the conquerors.
这是征服者的傲慢。
It’s the caste system in India.” But if you look at the details, none of that successfully explains what happened in India.
这就是印度的种姓制度。”但如果你看一下细节，你会发现这些都不能成功解释印度发生的事情。
What about the hypothesis that there’s something akin to the Asian tiger mom?
那么关于存在类似于亚洲虎妈妈的东西的假设又如何呢？
To enforce it, you need a network.
为了实施它，您需要一个网络。
It’s very hard to just do it on your own.
仅靠自己是很难做到的。
For the network to be there, you need many, many moving parts, major social changes.
为了实现网络的存在，你需要很多很多的活动部件，以及重大的社会变革。
India back then maybe didn’t have it.
当时的印度可能还没有。
Today at least, significant parts of India have their own version of the Indian tiger mom who kicks the kid’s butt across the room if they don’t finish at the top of their high school class, and that’s a social network.
至少在今天，印度的大部分地区都有自己版本的印度虎妈，如果孩子在高中成绩没有名列前茅，她就会把孩子的屁股踢到房间的另一边，这就是社交网络。
It’s determined by culture.
这是由文化决定的。
It’s super hard to build up just by having a few British people arrive with ships, and finally, we have it.
仅靠几个英国人乘船到达是非常困难的，最后，我们做到了。
True or false?
是真是假？
Except as I say, when the British arrived in India, the British were open.
正如我所说，当英国人到达印度时，英国人是开放的。
The important thing that people maybe have difficulty understanding about British upper class was it is an incredibly open upper class.
人们可能难以理解英国上层阶级的重要一点是，它是一个极其开放的上层阶级。
They were absorbing people coming from all different parts of the world.
他们吸引了来自世界各地的人们。
The Sassoon family, for example, ended up writing poetry against World War I, and also as the chief aid to the general fighting World War I.
例如，沙逊家族最终写了反对第一次世界大战的诗歌，同时也是对第一次世界大战的将军的主要援助。
They had absorbed into British society, lots of foreigners many times before.
他们以前曾多次融入英国社会，其中有很多外国人。
In India, they were actually absorbing a lot of upper-class Indians into British society.
在印度，他们实际上吸收了很多印度上层阶级进入英国社会。
What I’m saying is, to make the kind of revolution that we would expect in India, you don’t need 10 million people.
我想说的是，要在印度进行我们所期望的那种革命，不需要一千万人。
You only need a couple of thousand, it would seem, to lead India to modern economic growth.
看起来，你只需要几千人就能带领印度实现现代经济增长。
That’s what’s so puzzling.
这就是令人费解的地方。
You might explain all of this stuff, but all you need is some deviance.
你可能会解释所有这些东西，但你所需要的只是一些偏差。
Take an example of this.
举个例子。
Indian mills underperformed British textile mills.
印度纺织厂的表现落后于英国纺织厂。
In 1940, there were 450 Indian textile mills.
1940年，印度有450家纺织厂。
There was not a single one that achieved the average level of productivity of the English mills.
没有一家工厂能够达到英国工厂的平均生产率水平。
How is that possible when you have this varied set of entrepreneurs, varied set of people, that you just cannot match the performance that’s going on in this other society?
当你拥有各种各样的企业家、各种各样的人时，你怎么可能无法与另一个社会中正在发生的表现相媲美呢？
I remain puzzled by that.
我对此仍然感到困惑。
Say we look at some other extreme example: South Korea.
假设我们看另一个极端的例子：韩国。
In 1960, it’s maybe poorer than some parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
1960 年，它可能比撒哈拉以南非洲的一些地区还穷。
Today, it’s a fully developed country.
今天，它是一个完全发达国家。
I don’t know what happened there, but I know it’s not a big genetic change.
我不知道那里发生了什么，但我知道这不是一个大的基因变化。
Something in the culture.
文化中的一些东西。
They got their act together, and then they did great.
他们齐心协力，然后表现出色。
What’s wrong with just assigning these puzzles to culture?
将这些难题仅仅归咎于文化有什么问题吗？
Doesn’t mean we can explain them in the predictive sense.
并不意味着我们可以从预测意义上解释它们。
India somehow developed a better culture.
印度以某种方式发展出了更好的文化。
South Korea certainly did.
韩国当然做到了。
That we pretty much know.
我们几乎都知道。
Why resist that kind of explanation?
为什么要抵制这样的解释呢？
See, I’m not resisting here.
看，我在这里并不抗拒。
What I’m saying is, having now spent many years studying economic history, I’ve finally come to, I think, modesty, and to say, look, there are some problems that just defy any serious explanation, that we make no progress with, but then, it turns out, there are some other things where we can explain surprisingly well what’s happening.
我想说的是，在花了多年时间研究经济史之后，我终于谦虚地说，看，有些问题根本无法任何严肃的解释，我们在这些问题上没有取得任何进展，但事实证明，还有一些其他事情我们可以很好地解释正在发生的事情。
Basically what I’m saying is, why I turned to studying social mobility is that here was something which actually showed this law-like characteristic, and where you could actually understand the processes and the logic of this, and why I turned away from studying things like, why isn’t the whole world developed, is that it just seemed impossible to actually make progress on that because once you just say, “Okay, it’s some kind of cultural event,” then what are you going to say after that?
基本上我想说的是，为什么我转向研究社会流动性是因为这里有一个实际上表现出这种类似规律的特征的东西，在那里你可以真正理解它的过程和逻辑，为什么我不去研究诸如为什么整个世界没有发达之类的东西，是因为似乎不可能在这方面真正取得进展，因为一旦你说，“好吧，这是某种文化事件”，那么之后你会说什么？
This is where I worry you’re a bit too much of an economist.
这就是我担心你有点过于经济学家的地方。
If one insists on these very mono kinds of explanations — everything testable, measurable — then surely so many things in human history are hard to explain, but if we take a more humanities-based view, more pluralistic, even just ask Korean people themselves.
如果坚持这些非常单一的解释——“一切都是可测试的、可测量的”——那么人类历史上的很多事情肯定很难解释，但如果我们采取更基于人文、更多元化的观点，甚至只问韩国人自己。
They’re full of explanations, and they’ll often just say, “Well, we got our act together.” It doesn’t satisfy many economists, but maybe in some ways, it is good enough if we just have a broader sense.
他们充满了解释，而且常常只是说：“好吧，我们一起行动。”它并不能让许多经济学家满意，但也许在某些方面，如果我们有更广泛的认识就足够了。
In economics, there’s Ricardo, there’s Marx.
经济学中有李嘉图，有马克思。
Explanations are supposed to take a certain form.
解释应该采取某种形式。
Maybe that’s just our disease.
也许这就是我们的病。
Having written on the history of the Indian industrialization, in 1999, I dragged my spouse and three children on a five-month tour of India, seeking to try — just by being on the ground there — to see if you could understand anything more about why this economy, which was still at that stage, lagging enormously behind.
写完印度工业化的历史后，1999年，我拖着我的配偶和三个孩子对印度进行了为期五个月的旅行，试图尝试——“只要身临其境”——看看你是否能更多地理解为什么这个仍处于那个阶段的经济严重落后。
We traveled on train all the time, and we ended up talking to Indians.
我们一直坐火车旅行，最后我们和印度人交谈。
It was interesting to ask people, “Why is India so poor?”
问人们“为什么印度这么穷？”很有趣。
It turns out that people have all kinds of answers, but they’re easily testable as false.
事实证明，人们有各种各样的答案，但它们很容易被检验为错误的。
They would say, “Oh, it’s the population.
他们会说：“哦，这是人口。
We have too many people.” We know now, of course, that that actually is not going to make any difference.
我们人太多了。”当然，我们现在知道这实际上不会产生任何影响。
“It’s the corrupt politicians.” Or “it’s the education system.” Stuff like that.
“这是腐败的政客。”或者“这是教育系统。”诸如此类的事情。
The problem with, as I say, this pluralistic, open humanities-type explanation is, it doesn’t work.
正如我所说，这种多元化、开放的人文类型解释的问题是，它不起作用。
It’s time to get on board with the Scientific Revolution.
是时候加入科学革命了。
We can only explain things if we have these mechanistic, closed-form, empirically testable explanations.
只有拥有这些机械的、封闭形式的、可通过经验检验的解释，我们才能解释事物。
Otherwise, it’s just conversation.
否则，就只是聊天而已。
If we take England — when I read your book, A Farewell to Alms, I took you to be ambiguous, but when I reread that book through the lens of your later papers, it seems to me you’re saying there was an actual genetic change in English society because of who was marrying whom and having kids with whom, and thus, people saved more, became more conscientious, more forward-looking.
如果我们拿英国来说——当我读你的书《告别施舍》时，我认为你是模棱两可的，但当我通过你后来的论文的视角重读那本书时，在我看来，你是在说英国社会发生了真正的基因变化，因为谁与谁结婚，与谁生孩子，因此，人们储蓄更多，变得更加认真，更具前瞻性。
Yes.
是的。
Now, if that was genetic rather than cultural, why is it today, when I go to England, there’s a lot I’m disappointed by when it comes to conscientiousness?
现在，如果这是遗传而不是文化，为什么今天当我去英国时，当谈到责任心时，我对很多事情感到失望？
Really, quite a bit compared to, say, the rest of Europe.
确实，与欧洲其他地区相比，相当多。
That, to me, suggests it was much more cultural than genetic.
对我来说，这表明它更多的是文化因素而不是遗传因素。
The genetic change was probably small, the cultural one huge because it hasn’t persisted.
基因变化可能很小，文化变化却很大，因为它没有持续下去。
The differences in output per person in England compared to the rest of Europe are actually relatively minor.
与欧洲其他国家相比，英国人均产出的差异实际上相对较小。
If you look at other kinds of productions like scientific production, literary production, other things like that, there’s no vast difference.
如果你看看其他类型的作品，比如科学作品、文学作品等，你会发现并没有太大的区别。
But it’s a slightly below-average, mediocre performance, a bunch of stars in the South, star achievements.
但这是略低于平均水平、平庸的表现，一群南方明星，明星成就。
But if it were this general trend through the population as a whole, North England should be highly conscientious.
但如果这是整个人口的普遍趋势，北英格兰应该非常认真。
It doesn’t seem to be that much compared to, say, the Netherlands at all, never mind Denmark.
与荷兰相比，这似乎并没有那么多，更不用说丹麦了。
Two things I want to emphasize here.
我想在这里强调两件事。
One is, I think the processes that were operating in pre-industrial England reflect general processes operating in Northern Europe, where all of these societies show this phenomenon of survival of the richest, going on hundreds and hundreds of years before the Industrial Revolution.
一是，我认为前工业化英国的运作过程反映了北欧运作的一般过程，所有这些社会都表现出这种最富有的生存现象，这种现象在工业革命之前就已经发生了数百年。
Now we know very clearly that there are genetic differences between people at the top of the social ladder and people at the bottom, and that that was going to change the underlying genetics of these societies.
现在我们非常清楚地知道，社会阶梯顶端的人和底层的人之间存在基因差异，这将改变这些社会的潜在基因。
It seems to be, as I say, a general feature.
正如我所说，这似乎是一个普遍特征。
That’s the first one.
这是第一个。
I don’t think of England as being that different from these other locations.
我不认为英格兰与其他地方有什么不同。
The Industrial Revolution is spread out much more across Europe than you might think.
工业革命在欧洲的分布比您想象的要广泛得多。
There were accidental factors that propelled it to prominence in England.
有一些偶然的因素促使它在英国崭露头角。
In the new manuscript, what I’m able to do is track the reproductive success of people since 1750.
在新手稿中，我能做的是追踪 1750 年以来人类的繁殖成功率。
There was a period from 1850 till the 1920s or ’30s when an astonishingly low fertility emerged amongst upper classes in Britain.
从 1850 年到 20 年代或 30 年代，英国上层阶级的生育率低得惊人。
That was also compounded by very heavy losses of the upper classes in World War I.
第一次世界大战中上层阶级损失惨重，也加剧了这种情况。
Twenty percent of men of that generation in the upper classes died in World War I.
那一代上流社会的男性有百分之二十死于第一次世界大战。
But reproduction rates were at one child per family or one and a half for 50 or 60 years in the late 19th century amongst this group.
但在 19 世纪末的 50 或 60 年间，这一群体的生育率是每个家庭生育一个孩子或一个半。
So, the relative size of the upper class in Britain actually shrank dramatically in the course of this period.
因此，英国上层阶级的相对规模实际上在这一时期急剧萎缩。
That’s one potential explanation of, again, why British performance has been relatively lukewarm since about World War I, because as I say, it did go through this surprising and dramatic transformation socially where you’re really losing a lot of this upper class.
这也是为什么自第一次世界大战以来英国表现相对冷淡的一个潜在解释，因为正如我所说，它确实经历了这种令人惊讶和戏剧性的社会转变，你真的失去了很多上层阶级。
By the way, one interesting thing was how few of this upper class actually ended up marrying in this period.
顺便说一句，一件有趣的事情是，在这个时期，上流社会真正结婚的人很少。
It was somehow a renunciation of marriage and of family at that time — and puzzling.
在某种程度上，这在当时是对婚姻和家庭的放弃——而且令人费解。
It hasn’t persisted.
它并没有持续下去。
Now in Britain, fertility is pretty neutral between upper class and lower class.
现在在英国，上层阶级和下层阶级之间的生育率相当中性。
But there was this 60-year period that’s associated with quite a dramatic decline of Britain’s entrepreneurship and leadership in the world economy.
但在这 60 年里，英国的创业精神和在世界经济中的领导地位急剧下降。
There is this intriguing possibility that this actually was an important historical event.
有一种有趣的可能性，这实际上是一个重要的历史事件。
On Clarkian Malthusianism
论克拉克马尔萨斯主义
The genetic perspective — doesn’t it imply that societies close to Malthusian margins should actually become more and more conscientious over time?
从遗传学角度看——这难道不意味着接近马尔萨斯边缘的社会实际上应该随着时间的推移变得越来越认真吗？
Because just to survive, you’ve got to take care of whatever savings you have, and that that trait should evolve, but just casual empiricism doesn’t seem to show those societies as being more conscientious.
因为为了生存，你必须照顾好你所有的积蓄，而且这种特质应该不断发展，但只是随意的经验主义似乎并没有表明这些社会更加认真。
But here’s one element of casual empiricism.
但这是偶然经验主义的一个要素。
If you look in modern economic competition, we can rank societies by how old they are.
如果你看看现代经济竞争，我们可以根据社会的历史对它们进行排名。
China is extremely old.
中国非常古老。
If you go to other parts of Southeast Asia, these are much younger societies in terms of settled agriculture.
如果你去东南亚的其他地方，你会发现这些社会在定居农业方面要年轻得多。
And what you observe in Asia is that laborers exported from China to work on plantations elsewhere in Southeast Asia have become the entrepreneurial class in all of those societies — in Indonesia, in Malaysia, in the Philippines, and somehow the history of different societies is still predictive of how people are going to do in modern economic competition.
你在亚洲观察到的是，从中国输出到东南亚其他地方种植园工作的劳动力已经成为所有这些社会中的企业家阶层——在印度尼西亚、马来西亚、菲律宾，而且不同社会的历史在某种程度上仍然可以预测人们在现代经济竞争中的表现。
The question would be, putting it back to you, what cultural explanation would there be for why that type of history would actually matter so much in terms of modern competition?
问题是，回到你身上，对于为什么这种类型的历史在现代竞争方面实际上如此重要，有什么文化解释？
One argument just would be that under the anvil of the Malthusian era, these societies were transformed more by these selective pressures applied for thousands of years, and that then emerges in terms of basic behavior of people in the society that makes them perform better even now.
一种论点是，在马尔萨斯时代的铁砧下，这些社会在数千年来施加的选择性压力的作用下发生了更多的转变，然后就出现了社会中人们的基本行为，使他们即使在现在也表现得更好。
The most conscientious places — Denmark being one example, as you now live with — they’ve been above subsistence for quite a while.
最有良心的地方 ——丹麦就是一个例子，正如你现在所生活的那样——它们已经在相当长一段时间内处于温饱之上。
The Danes had a somewhat mature nation-state quite early, as did England, some relative form of stability, markets with food supply, and transportation networks.
丹麦人很早就有一个比较成熟的民族国家，就像英国一样，有某种相对形式的稳定、有食品供应的市场和交通网络。
Again, you could make a point about China, but if you just test that point out of sample, where are the conscientious peoples?
同样，你可以对中国提出一个观点，但如果你只是从样本中检验这个观点，那些有良知的人民在哪里？
It seems it’s in the places the furthest from Malthusian equilibria, where selection pressures are the weakest.
似乎是在离马尔萨斯均衡最远的地方，那里的选择压力最弱。
Now, it’s true in Northwest Europe that living standards in the pre-industrial period — material living standards — were significantly higher than it seems in Asia.
现在，在西北欧，前工业化时期的生活水平（物质生活水平）明显高于亚洲。
That shows up in a whole bunch of ways.
这体现在很多方面。
For example, people at higher living standards consume alcohol.
例如，生活水平较高的人会喝酒。
It’s an expensive form of calories.
这是一种昂贵的卡路里形式。
In Asia, there’s very little consumption of alcohol, and that actually shows up now in terms of people’s tolerance for alcohol.
在亚洲，饮酒量很少，这实际上体现在人们对酒精的耐受性上。
Again, dairy products in Europe, they’re widely consumed.
同样，乳制品在欧洲被广泛消费。
In Asia, no. Again, they’re too expensive, and that shows up again in people’s ability to absorb milk.
在亚洲，没有。同样，它们太贵了，这再次体现在人们吸收牛奶的能力上。
But because you’re at this higher material standard, it doesn’t mean to say that the Malthusian constraints are not still applying.
但因为你处于更高的物质标准，这并不意味着马尔萨斯约束不再适用。
There are relatively rich Malthusian societies, but they can still be societies where the conditions of reproduction are such that people are constrained, that they will only reproduce successfully if they’re above these living standards, and that can be because of various social constraints about when people get married, how fertile marriages are.
存在相对富裕的马尔萨斯社会，但它们仍然可能是人们的生育条件受到限制的社会，只有高于这些生活水平，他们才会成功生育，这可能是因为人们何时结婚、婚姻的生育能力等方面存在各种社会限制。
As I say, the fact that Europe was relatively rich — and we can even extend this back to the Stone Age in Northern Europe, where again, skeletons from that period are very robust compared to somewhere like Japan in the earlier period — that doesn’t mean that these Malthusian constraints didn’t operate.
正如我所说，欧洲相对富裕这一事实——我们甚至可以将这一点追溯到北欧的石器时代，与早期的日本等地相比，那个时期的骨骼非常坚固——但这并不意味着这些马尔萨斯约束不起作用。
One classic example of this is when people arrived in Tahiti.
一个典型的例子是人们到达塔希提岛时。
That was clearly a Malthusian society.
那显然是一个马尔萨斯社会。
There’s a bunch of people stuck in an island with limited resources.
有一群人被困在一个资源有限的岛上。
You were going to reach some kind of population equilibrium, and you were clearly going to be under these Malthusian constraints.
你将达到某种人口平衡，并且你显然将受到这些马尔萨斯约束。
It was materially quite a well-resourced society, but you still have these constraints, and as long as you have these constraints, it’s possible then for people who are doing better economically to produce more children, and doing worse economically to produce fewer children.
这是一个物质资源相当丰富的社会，但是仍然存在这些限制，只要有这些限制，那么经济状况较好的人就有可能生出更多的孩子，而经济状况较差的人就有可能生出更少的孩子。
This is maybe a side point, but it seems odd to me to think of them as Malthusian, when they have the greatest ability to transport themselves over long distances of almost any society, and they settle much of the South Pacific, and the idea that mobility gets you free land, free supply of fish, whatever — they seemed to have realized that better than almost anyone.
这也许是一个侧面，但在我看来，将他们视为马尔萨斯主义者似乎很奇怪，因为他们拥有几乎所有社会中最强大的长距离运输能力，并且他们定居在南太平洋的大部分地区，而流动性可以让你获得免费的土地，自由的鱼类供应，无论什么——他们似乎比几乎任何人都更意识到这一点。
The Europeans — when they went there, they didn’t feel so sorry for the Tahitians.
欧洲人 ——当他们去那里时，他们并没有为塔希提人感到难过。
Oh, no, they thought the Tahitians were living incredibly well.
哦，不，他们认为塔希提人生活得非常好。
Yes, were doing okay, so it wasn’t Malthusian because of transportation and mobility.
是的，我们做得还不错，所以由于交通和流动性，这不是马尔萨斯式的。
No, no, no, but they were isolated, and they had these very limited resources.
不，不，不，但他们是孤立的，而且他们的资源非常有限。
It turns out, why were living standards so great?
事实证明，为什么生活水平这么高？
Two things: they had murderous internal warfare that disposed of a lot of people, and they practiced a very strong degree of infanticide.
有两件事：他们进行了残酷的内战，杀死了很多人，并且他们实行了非常严重的杀婴行为。
They were killing between a third and half of all children born in the society.
他们杀害了社会上出生的所有儿童的三分之一到一半。
So, it was a Malthusian society, but it turns out, there are lots of Malthusian societies where people live at relatively high living standards.
所以，这是一个马尔萨斯社会，但事实证明，有很多马尔萨斯社会，人们的生活水平相对较高。
In what sense is it Malthusian, then?
那么，它在什么意义上是马尔萨斯主义呢？
That the regulating mechanism is not starvation seems almost by definition to make it not Malthusian.
调节机制不是饥饿，这似乎几乎从定义上就可以看出它不是马尔萨斯式的。
No, no. To be Malthusian, it just has to be a society where there’s going to be a positive association between fertility rates and living standards, and where there’s a limited supply of material.
不，不。马尔萨斯主义者认为，社会中的生育率和生活水平之间必须存在正相关关系，而且物质供应有限。
That’s a funny definition for Malthus.
这是马尔萨斯的一个有趣的定义。
It’s my definition.
这是我的定义。
Clarkian.
克拉克安。
No, no. This is a widespread misinterpretation of Malthus, that Malthus is about low living standards.
不，不。这是对马尔萨斯的普遍误解，认为马尔萨斯是关于低生活水平的。
I think my earlier book, A Farewell to Alms — one of the actual innovative elements of that book was to say, “Let’s take apart these two different elements of Malthusianism.” One is the element that you’re forced to an equilibrium where the birth rate equals the death rate.
我认为我之前的书《告别施舍》——该书的一个真正的创新元素是说，“让我们把马尔萨斯主义的这两个不同元素拆开。”一是你被迫达到出生率等于死亡率的平衡的因素。
The second is that that equilibrium does not necessarily imply relatively low living standards.
第二，这种均衡并不一定意味着生活水平相对较低。
The way this shows up is, after the Black Death in Europe, which increased mortality rates, living standards in somewhere like Britain in 1450 were not again equal till the end of the Industrial Revolution.
表现出来的方式是，在欧洲黑死病导致死亡率上升之后，像1450年的英国这样的地方的生活水平直到工业革命结束才再次平等。
But you could tell this was a static population in England at that period.
但你可以看出，这是当时英格兰的静态人口。
There were tiny numbers of people.
人数很少。
There were less than 2 million people in England by 1450.
到 1450 年，英格兰人口不足 200 万。
It was consequently a Malthusian economy, but an incredibly rich Malthusian economy, where people, when they talked about their diet, they talked about the daily meat that they would eat.
因此，这是一个马尔萨斯经济，而且是一个极其丰富的马尔萨斯经济，当人们谈论他们的饮食时，他们谈论的是他们每天吃的肉。
So, they really were living at high material living standards.
所以说，他们的物质生活水平确实很高。
We can go back and look at the houses they constructed in that period.
我们可以回去看看他们那个时期建造的房子。
People here in Arlington would be happy to move into some of these medieval houses.
阿灵顿的人们会很高兴搬进其中一些中世纪的房子。
COWEN: Under your current view, is foreign aid to sub-Saharan Africa counterproductive?
COWEN：在您目前看来，对撒哈拉以南非洲地区的外援是否会适得其反？
I’m not talking about corruption or siphoning it off.
我不是在谈论腐败或吸走腐败。
Those are clearly problems but just aid as a brute, abstract concept.
这些显然是问题，但只是作为一个粗暴、抽象的概念提供帮助。
Does it counteract itself through Malthusian, or what I would call Clarkian mechanisms?
它是否通过马尔萨斯机制或我所说的克拉克机制来抵消自身？
I think you used to believe that.
我想你曾经相信过这一点。
There are societies like Malawi in sub-Saharan Africa where there is consistent economic progress, but that progress gets eaten up in terms of population growth.
像撒哈拉以南非洲的马拉维这样的社会，经济持续进步，但这种进步被人口增长所吞噬。
So, the living standards really have not managed to increase for 50 or 60 years in these societies because they still depend very heavily on agriculture.
因此，这些社会的生活水平实际上已经50年或60年没有提高，因为他们仍然严重依赖农业。
There’s a limited agricultural area, and better technology then induces more people.
农业面积有限，更好的技术就会吸引更多的人。
How could you best help such societies?
你怎样才能最好地帮助这样的社会？
It would be somehow by breaking that link between resources and population.
这将通过某种方式打破资源和人口之间的联系。
Industrialization, if it’s possible to achieve, would be fantastic in these societies.
如果工业化能够实现，那么在这些社会中将是非常棒的。
The second thing would be limits on population growth.
第二件事是限制人口增长。
It looks like those limits are coming, and that we are going to see such a transformation, but there’s —
看起来这些限制即将到来，我们将看到这样的转变，但是 -
A lot of this aid is public health.
其中很大一部分援助是公共卫生方面的。
More people survive, more people live longer.
更多的人生存下来，更多的人活得更久。
That all seems to me to give them better lives.
在我看来，这一切都是为了给他们更好的生活。
It may not always show up in per capita GDP.
它可能并不总是体现在人均GDP中。
Right, but even though, as I say, there still is this quasi-Malthusian link between population and living standards in these societies, that doesn’t mean to say that people wouldn’t be better off if you give people more resources.
是的，但正如我所说，尽管这些社会中的人口和生活水平之间仍然存在这种准马尔萨斯式的联系，但这并不意味着如果你给人们更多的资源，人们的生活就不会变得更好。
If you care about the population in Africa and their living standards, then there’s nothing to say that aid isn’t a good thing in this case.
如果你关心非洲人民及其生活水平，那么在这种情况下，毫无疑问援助不是一件好事。
All that you can say, though, is, look, a bunch of that aid will result in more population growth, and so it will undercut the ultimate effects of that aid, and it would be much more effective if somehow you could actually transform these societies so that they’re not heavily dependent on limited agricultural resources.
不过，你能说的就是，看，大量援助将导致更多的人口增长，因此它将削弱援助的最终效果，如果你能以某种方式真正改变这些社会，使他们不再严重依赖有限的农业资源，那会更有效。
On hereditarianism
论世袭主义
You wrote a piece published in Quillette, and you used the word hereditarian, and you say, “I’m a hereditarian.
你在《Quillette》上发表了一篇文章，使用了“遗传主义者”这个词，然后你说：“我是一个遗传主义者。
That means a lot of redistribution of income is a good thing.” I’m oversimplifying your message, but insofar as one is a hereditarian, what are the policy implications of that?
这意味着大量的收入再分配是一件好事。”我过于简单化了你的信息，但就一个人是遗传主义者而言，这会产生什么政策影响？
Oh, I think once you recognize that a lot of our outcomes are actually the product of inheritance and are not mutable, they’re not changeable, then that fits perfectly well with a society that I like living in — Denmark — where there’s a huge amount of redistribution, effectively, being done.
哦，我想一旦你认识到我们的很多结果实际上是继承的产物，并且是不可改变的，那么这就非常适合我喜欢生活在的社会——“丹麦”——那里正在进行大量的再分配，有效地进行。
I think these things go together.
我认为这些事情是相辅相成的。
You should recognize that a lot of things happen to us that we don’t control.
你应该认识到，很多发生在我们身上的事情是我们无法控制的。
There are accidents of our family history, and a good society is one that doesn’t magnify those differences between people, but rather can seek to compress them.
我们的家族史存在偶然性，一个好的社会不会放大人与人之间的差异，而是会设法缩小它们。
One of the interesting things about Denmark — it’s stunning to me when I go there — tax rates on people are so high, but it’s still a highly productive, technologically innovative society.
丹麦有趣的事情之一——“当我去那里时，它令我震惊”——“人们的税率如此之高，但它仍然是一个生产力高、技术创新的社会。
So, it’s proving that you can have a surprising amount of compression of income differences and redistribution and still have a perfectly functional society.
因此，这证明你可以在收入差异和再分配方面得到惊人的压缩，同时仍然拥有一个功能完善的社会。
Isn’t the implication in a way the exact opposite of that?
这句话的含义在某种程度上是不是正好相反呢？
That if the way people can advance is by moving, Denmark is pretty stingy with its migration policy.
如果人们进步的方式是通过迁徙，那么丹麦的移民政策就相当吝啬了。
Denmark should have lower taxes, lower welfare to attract the higher-quality immigrants, say, from South India and other places, and they should be more open.
丹麦应该降低税收、降低福利，以吸引更高质量的移民，比如来自南印度和其他地方的移民，而且应该更加开放。
That would make them much more productive, make the people coming from South India way, way, way more productive, be good for the whole world, because Denmark is closer to the technological frontier.
这将使他们的生产力大大提高，使来自印度南部的人们的生产力大大提高，对整个世界都有好处，因为丹麦更接近技术前沿。
We see this with GLP.
我们通过 GLP 看到了这一点。
It’s exactly an argument against this little closed, “We all went to high school together; going to have a welfare state with high taxes” approach.
这正是反对这种封闭的观点，“我们一起上高中；将建立一个高税收的福利国家”的方法。
I must say, there is a problem then in Denmark, which is that it relies on people not taking huge advantage of this welfare system, which is very generous.
我必须说，丹麦存在一个问题，那就是它依赖于人们没有充分利用这个非常慷慨的福利制度。
Immigrants coming to Denmark have not responded in the same way.
来到丹麦的移民并没有以同样的方式做出反应。
Maybe you’re taking in the wrong immigrants because if there’s a welfare system and high taxes, you’re not selecting for the people who are going to do the best, unlike the United States, which gets all these Indian CEOs because you can get richer here and stay richer.
也许你接纳了错误的移民，因为如果有福利制度和高税收，你就不会选择那些会做得最好的人，这与美国不同，美国拥有所有这些印度首席执行官，因为你可以在这里变得更富有并保持更富有。
Right.
正确的。
Now, actually, in Danish politics, there is a strong argument about what type of immigrants you want to attract.
现在，实际上，在丹麦政治中，关于你想吸引什么类型的移民存在着激烈的争论。
Throughout Europe, in fact, this has become a huge issue.
事实上，在整个欧洲，这已经成为一个大问题。
You’ve got to get rid of these high taxes to get the good ones.
你必须摆脱这些高税收才能获得好的税收。
That’s a good question.
这是一个好问题。
Denmark offers a lot of other good things in life, though I must say the weather is not one of them.
丹麦在生活中提供了许多其他美好事物，但我必须说天气不是其中之一。
It is actually interesting, yes, how limited emigration has been from places like, say, Vietnam or India or something like that to places like Denmark because these immigrants would be very successful within this society.
是的，实际上很有趣的是，从越南或印度等地到丹麦等地的移民是多么有限，因为这些移民在这个社会中会非常成功。
The more the native Danes are below replacement fertility, the more urgent it is that you lower taxes and attract the best migrants, I would think.
我认为，本土丹麦人的生育率越低于更替生育率，就越迫切需要降低税收并吸引最优秀的移民。
You should just be like a full-scale classical liberal, low-tax regime.
你应该像一个全面的古典自由主义、低税收制度。
Yes, you need a safety net, but not too much because that will attract the wrong immigrants.
是的，你需要一个安全网，但不要太多，因为这会吸引错误的移民。
People — they come to America, they know they’ve got to make it on their own.
人们来到美国，他们知道自己必须靠自己来实现这一目标。
That attracts, on average, the right immigrants.
平均而言，这吸引了合适的移民。
Yes, but you can see every day in Denmark the benefits of having .
是的，但您在丹麦每天都可以看到拥有的好处。
.
。
.
。
Unskilled workers earn much higher wages than they would in the United States.
非技术工人的工资比美国高得多。
People can live at a decent living standard.
人们可以过上体面的生活。
I’m living in California part of the year, and it’s just shocking the number of homeless people there are everywhere.
我一年中有一段时间住在加利福尼亚州，那里到处都是无家可归的人，数量令人震惊。
Within a mile of my house, there are people living homeless in California, and it just doesn’t exist, this, in Denmark.
在我家一英里的范围内，有一些人在加利福尼亚州无家可归，而这种情况在丹麦根本不存在。
I understand perfectly the Danes’ desire to preserve this.
我完全理解丹麦人保留这一点的愿望。
The other problem the Danes have is, there’s only five-and-a-half million of them.
丹麦人面临的另一个问题是，丹麦人只有五百五十万。
They cherish their culture, their history, and stuff like that.
他们珍惜自己的文化、历史等等。
One of the things they would fear about immigration is that already, if you walk in the streets of Copenhagen, the majority of people are speaking English to each other.
他们对移民担心的一件事是，如果你走在哥本哈根的街道上，大多数人已经在互相说英语了。
The other thing, I think, that would limit immigration to Denmark is that people really do have this cultural identity.
我认为，限制移民丹麦的另一件事是人们确实拥有这种文化认同。
One of the things that they wanted to insist was that immigrants actually have to assimilate.
他们想要坚持的一件事是移民实际上必须同化。
It’s actually —
其实是 ——
I’m all for that.
我完全赞成。
It turns out, it’s perfectly possible for someone like me to not assimilate and speak English in Danish society.
事实证明，像我这样的人完全有可能不融入丹麦社会并说英语。
It is an intriguing issue, though, about whether we should become more free market so that then we could have a different attractiveness to different sets of immigrants.
然而，这是一个有趣的问题，即我们是否应该变得更加自由市场，以便我们对不同类型的移民具有不同的吸引力。
On Denmark and Scotland
关于丹麦和苏格兰
After you moved to southern Denmark, what was the biggest surprise for you?
搬到丹麦南部后，给您带来的最大惊喜是什么？
I was surprised at how communitarian Danes were.
我对丹麦人的社群主义感到惊讶。
At the university I’m at, every Friday they gather in a lecture room to sing songs together.
在我所在的大学，每个星期五他们都会聚集在教室里一起唱歌。
Also, there’s an annual Christmas party.
此外，还有一年一度的圣诞晚会。
They have 4,000 people eat dinner together at the university.
他们有 4,000 人在大学里一起吃晚饭。
I was actually surprised at that sense of community that Danes have.
事实上，我对丹麦人的社区意识感到惊讶。
For you, is that fun or stifling?
对你来说，这是有趣还是令人窒息？
Oh, no, I like it.
哦，不，我喜欢。
I appreciate it.
我很感激。
So, you do it?
那么，你做到了吗？
Are you there singing?
你在唱歌吗？
I don’t go to the singing.
我不去唱歌。
So it’s stifling.
所以这很令人窒息。
They sing in Danish, right?
他们用丹麦语唱歌，对吗？
That was my first surprise.
这是我的第一个惊喜。
The second thing that surprised me was how committed Danes were as drinkers.
第二让我惊讶的是丹麦人是多么热衷于饮酒。
COWEN: I’m shocked that these are the things that surprised you.
COWEN：我很震惊这些事情让你感到惊讶。
In the town I’m in, there’s actually a pub that opens at 10:00 at night and stays open till 8:00 am in the morning.
在我所在的小镇上，实际上有一家酒吧晚上 10:00 营业，一直营业到早上 8:00。
Danes are not the most talkative people in the world.
丹麦人不是世界上最健谈的人。
My thought is, “What are they doing all night at this pub?” As I say, I was just surprised at that.
我的想法是，“他们整夜在这家酒吧做什么？”正如我所说，我对此感到惊讶。
In other respects, by the way, Danes are super healthy.
顺便说一句，在其他方面，丹麦人非常健康。
Their gyms are open all hours.
他们的健身房全天候开放。
There are people in there exercising all the time, and they do very well.
那里有人一直在锻炼，而且做得很好。
I was surprised, though, at how much they drank.
不过，我对他们喝了多少酒感到惊讶。
Then secondly, at the residing sense of community.
其次，是社区的存在感。
They have laws in Denmark, for example, to try to prevent Germans from actually buying seaside property in towns, where you actually have to live in the property all year.
例如，丹麦有法律试图阻止德国人实际购买城镇的海滨房产，因为你实际上必须全年居住在该房产中。
I come from Scotland, so I appreciate the problems of small societies trying to still remain culturally distinct in this modern world.
我来自苏格兰，所以我理解小社会在现代世界中试图保持文化独特性所面临的问题。
How optimistic are you about Scotland today?
您今天对苏格兰有多乐观？
Actually, I’ve seen the data.
事实上，我已经看到了数据。
The North of England is in terrible shape.
英格兰北部的情况很糟糕。
Interestingly, Scotland is doing much better.
有趣的是，苏格兰的表现要好得多。
What’s interesting about Scottish society is, when I go back there now, I seem to them completely like an American.
苏格兰社会的有趣之处在于，当我现在回到那里时，在他们看来我完全像一个美国人。
I meet all kinds of people who are completely non-Scottish in origin, who have become culturally completely Scottish.
我遇到了各种各样的人，他们的血统完全不是苏格兰人，但在文化上却完全是苏格兰人。
My niece got married there to a guy who’s Chinese, and his best man was Vietnamese, and they were all dressed in kilts, and they had bagpipes playing.
我的侄女在那里嫁给了一个中国人，他的伴郎是越南人，他们都穿着苏格兰短裙，吹着风笛。
It’s amazing that the culture continues in Scotland.
令人惊奇的是，这种文化在苏格兰得以延续。
In economic terms, Scotland is actually doing pretty well.
从经济角度来看，苏格兰实际上表现得相当不错。
As I say, it’s not —
正如我所说，这不是 ——
But there’re big subsidies from the South of England.
但英格兰南部提供了大量补贴。
Without those subsidies, what’s per capita GDP there?
如果没有这些补贴，那里的人均GDP是多少？
I did say that when Scotland was considering independence, this would be like a parasite detaching itself from the host, because in order to keep Scotland within the UK, they have been paying out these very generous subsidies.
我确实说过，当苏格兰考虑独立时，这就像一个脱离宿主的寄生虫，因为为了让苏格兰留在英国境内，他们一直在支付这些非常慷慨的补贴。
For example, in Scotland, university education is free.
例如，在苏格兰，大学教育是免费的。
In England, you have to pay for this.
在英国，你必须为此付出代价。
Scottish universities then actually have to charge English students for their education, or else the English would be flooding across the borders into Scotland.
苏格兰大学实际上必须向英国学生收取教育费用，否则英国人将跨越边境涌入苏格兰。
But it turns out, under the EU, the Germans could go for free because the EU treaties actually said you can’t discriminate against people from other countries, but you can discriminate against people within your own country.
但事实证明，在欧盟的领导下，德国人可以免费离开，因为欧盟条约实际上规定你不能歧视其他国家的人，但你可以歧视自己国家的人。
My hope is that Scotland will remain part of the UK and will continue to draw subsidies from the UK treasury.
我希望苏格兰仍然是英国的一部分，并继续从英国财政部获得补贴。
As I say, it seems to be doing fine.
正如我所说，它似乎做得很好。
Why are public health indicators so bad in and around Glasgow?
为什么格拉斯哥及其周边地区的公共卫生指标如此糟糕？
They’re some of the worst in the developed world, maybe the very worst.
他们是发达国家中最糟糕的国家之一，也许是最糟糕的。
This actually was interesting.
这其实很有趣。
When I was writing my second book, I wanted to illustrate this with a picture because Glasgow has some of the lowest life expectancy of anywhere in Western Europe — some parts of Glasgow, within a few miles of where I lived in Glasgow.
当我写第二本书时，我想用一张图片来说明这一点，因为格拉斯哥是西欧地区预期寿命最低的地方——格拉斯哥的一些地区，距离我住的地方几英里。
I thought, “Oh, that’s fine.
我想：“哦，那好吧。
I’ll go to Google Earth and I’ll get a picture of the squalor of Glasgow.” It turns out, it doesn’t exist.
我会去谷歌地球，拍一张格拉斯哥肮脏的照片。”事实证明，它不存在。
No, there is squalor in Glasgow.
不，格拉斯哥很肮脏。
No.
不。
I’ve been to Glasgow.
我去过格拉斯哥。
No. The subsidies and everything else are so generous that I couldn’t find genuine squalor in Glasgow, not compared to California.
不。补贴和其他一切都非常慷慨，以至于我在格拉斯哥找不到真正的肮脏，与加利福尼亚相比。
You need a New Jersey boy to take you on a tour.
你需要一个新泽西男孩带你游览。
In the end, I had to actually use this slightly fake picture which showed squalor, but it was because it was a building that was going to be demolished.
最后，我不得不实际使用这张稍微有点假的图片，显示出肮脏的感觉，但那是因为它是一座即将被拆除的建筑。
What is amazing is that within what is relatively decent material conditions, people live these lives which are ones of terrible health conditions, lots of people are unemployed, and again, it’s hard to understand.
令人惊奇的是，在物质条件相对较好的情况下，人们的健康状况却很糟糕，很多人失业，这又令人难以理解。
It can’t be genetic because it’s fairly recent.
它不可能是遗传的，因为它是最近才出现的。
So, it’s cultural.
所以，这是文化。
The culture has this big, huge influence.
这种文化有如此巨大的影响力。
But there’s been a lot of selective migration within the UK.
但英国境内存在很多选择性移民。
This new book says the growth of the South and the decline of the North is all attributable to self-selection within Britain.
这本新书说，南方的崛起和北方的衰落都是英国内部的自我选择造成的。
Glasgow, where I come from, has had a huge amount of out-migration.
我来自格拉斯哥，有大量人口向外迁移。
Out-migration — it tends to be people with more talent, ability, stuff like that, are the ones who are on the move.
向外移民——往往是那些拥有更多才华、能力等的人，才是流动的人。
So, what you’re actually seeing, I think, is that a lot of this is selective migration of people.
所以，我认为，你实际上看到的是，其中很多都是选择性的人口迁移。
My sister trained as a doctor in Glasgow, and when they interviewed patients, they were actually trained to ask them, “How much do you drink per day?
我姐姐在格拉斯哥接受过医生培训，当他们采访病人时，他们实际上接受的训练是问他们：“你每天喝多少？
Ten pints?” People would say, “Oh, no, doctor, only six.” In some sense, you might say that’s some cultural hangover in terms of people’s attitude to things like drinking and exercise and vegetables.
十品脱？”人们会说：“哦，不，医生，只有六个。”从某种意义上说，你可能会说这是人们对饮酒、运动和蔬菜等事物的态度方面的一些文化残留。
On Ireland
关于爱尔兰
What’s your take, then, on modern Ireland?
那么，您对现代爱尔兰有何看法？
There’re incredibly high rates of out-migration, and I don’t just mean the potato famine, just Irish going to Liverpool.
向外移民的比例高得令人难以置信，我指的不仅仅是马铃薯饥荒，而是爱尔兰人前往利物浦。
America, Australia, all over.
美国、澳大利亚，到处都是。
You look at Ireland today — it doesn’t seem selection is that important.
你看看今天的爱尔兰 —— 选择似乎并不那么重要。
Their education level is the highest in Western Europe.
他们的教育水平是西欧最高的。
Health indicators, income, whatever test you want to run, they just seem like normal Ireland.
健康指标、收入，无论你想进行什么测试，它们看起来都和正常的爱尔兰一样。
So, selection there hasn’t mattered?
那么，选择并不重要？
Or what should I infer?
或者我应该推断什么？
It turns out, even though I live in Scotland, all of my family is Irish.
事实证明，尽管我住在苏格兰，但我的家人都是爱尔兰人。
Ah, okay, now we’re talking.
啊，好吧，现在我们正在说话。
Same here.
同样在这里。
So, I’ve thought about the whole selection issue.
所以，我考虑了整个选择问题。
My co-author, Neil Cummins, has a paper that just came out, I think, or is just coming out, about the Irish in England, which argues that there was significant negative selection to the Irish who actually moved to England, and that the Irish within England, even over the course of 150 years, have remained a lower class in English society, particularly those who moved to the North of England.
我的合著者尼尔·康明斯（Neil Cummins）有一篇关于英格兰爱尔兰人的论文，我想，刚刚发表，该论文认为，实际上移居英格兰的爱尔兰人存在显着的负面选择，而英格兰境内的爱尔兰人，即使在 150 年的时间里，仍然是英国社会的下层阶级，特别是那些移居英格兰北部的爱尔兰人。
Why negative selection in this hypothesis?
为什么在这个假设中进行负选择？
Because the ones who are about to starve?
因为那些即将挨饿的人？
I think one argument was the kinds of jobs that were available in the North of England favored people who were unskilled.
我认为一个论点是英格兰北部提供的工作种类有利于非技术人员。
Again, in Scotland, what were the Irish doing coming in?
再一次，在苏格兰，爱尔兰人进来做什么？
They were working in the steelworks, the coal mines, scrapyards, and stuff like that.
他们在钢铁厂、煤矿、废料场等地方工作。
It was this heavy industry that was attracting these migrants.
正是这种重工业吸引了这些移民。
One argument has been that migration out of Ireland has actually not been particularly positively selected.
一种论点是，爱尔兰的移民实际上并没有经过特别积极的选择。
In this new book, I do actually look at migration from England to other countries.
在这本新书中，我确实研究了从英国到其他国家的移民。
Interestingly, English migrants to the United States are the least positively selected.
有趣的是，前往美国的英国移民是最不被积极选择的。
For other countries, like Australia and New Zealand, they are being positively selected, but that’s more than counterbalanced in England by immigration of skilled people into England.
对于澳大利亚和新西兰等其他国家来说，他们正在被积极选择，但在英国，技术人员移民到英格兰的情况远远抵消了这一点。
Basically, England is constantly being refreshed by migrants from Europe who are highly skilled.
基本上，英格兰不断被来自欧洲的高技能移民所刷新。
The process of migration is quite complex.
迁移的过程相当复杂。
Again, the question I had in Scandinavia was, look, Sweden and Norway — not so much Denmark — lost a huge fraction of their population in the 19th century to migration.
同样，我在斯堪的纳维亚半岛遇到的问题是，看，瑞典和挪威（而不是丹麦）在 19 世纪因移民而失去了很大一部分人口。
How can these countries be so highly performing now?
这些国家现在怎么能表现得这么好呢？
It turns out, the evidence is that migration was actually negatively selected in Scandinavia.
事实证明，有证据表明，斯堪的纳维亚半岛的移民实际上是负面选择的。
If I go to North Dakota, which is full of Scandinavians, they’re doing fine.
如果我去北达科他州，那里到处都是斯堪的纳维亚人，他们过得很好。
Their indicators are great.
他们的指标都很棒。
They look, feel, and act a bit like actual Nordics demographically.
从人口结构来看，他们的外表、感觉和行为都有点像真正的北欧人。
It doesn’t feel like negative selection.
感觉不像是负面选择。
Again, in the book, The Son Also Rises, you can examine — just looking at surnames — different groups within US society.
同样，在《儿子也升起》一书中，你可以审视 ——只要看姓氏—— 美国社会中的不同群体。
Basically, all European groups within the United States look very average.
基本上，美国境内的所有欧洲团体看起来都很一般。
I think that there wasn’t really particularly strong selective pressures on migrations out of Europe.
我认为，对于离开欧洲的移民来说，并没有特别强烈的选择性压力。
You do see that people who came from Quebec, French speakers from Quebec, are an underclass in the United States, that somehow there was some negative selection of people from that background.
你确实看到来自魁北克的人，来自魁北克的讲法语的人，在美国是下层阶级，不知何故，对来自这种背景的人进行了一些负面选择。
Basically, Europeans in the United States now — people of European descent — are very much average.
基本上，现在在美国的欧洲人 —— 欧洲血统的人 —— 都非常平均。
Then the new elites in the United States are Chinese, particularly Indians, the Jewish population and stuff like that, where there is clearly some very strong positive selection going on.
那么美国的新精英是华人，特别是印度人、犹太人等等，这些地方显然存在着一些非常强烈的积极选择。
But it seems like the 19th-century migration was not so selective.
但 19 世纪的移民似乎并没有那么有选择性。
My sense for Ireland would be, whatever the forces driving migration in Ireland were, maybe it actually was either neutral or even negatively selected, some of the immigration from Ireland.
我对爱尔兰的感觉是，无论推动爱尔兰移民的力量是什么，也许其中一些来自爱尔兰的移民实际上是中立的，甚至是负面选择的。
Do you have a sense for Latin America?
您对拉丁美洲有了解吗？
I unfortunately don’t know.
不幸的是我不知道。
I know —
我知道 ——
A different set of them go to Spain than to the US.
其中前往西班牙的人与前往美国的人不同。
I’m not sure how it all pans out.
我不确定这一切是如何进行的。
If you look at migrants from Latin America to the United States, the further away the country is from the US, the better they tend to do, and so, the more positively selected they tend to be.
如果你看看从拉丁美洲到美国的移民，就会发现这个国家离美国越远，他们的表现就越好，因此，他们就越容易受到积极的选择。
The distance-from-equator growth hypothesis predicts that too, right?
距赤道距离增长假说也预测了这一点，对吗？
Oh, right, that would also be, yes.
哦，对了，那也是，是的。
I think it tends to be, if you’re coming from places like Chile, coming to the United States, it tends to be quite strongly positively selected.
我认为，如果你来自智利等地，来到美国，它往往会受到非常强烈的积极选择。
Before we move to questions, I’ll just note, Greg is in the process of producing a new book.
在我们开始提问之前，我想指出的是，格雷格正在制作一本新书。
I believe the title is, For Whom the Bell Curve Tolls: Genetics and Social Life in England, 1600 to 2025.
我认为标题是《钟形曲线为谁而鸣：英国的遗传学和社会生活，1600 年至 2025 年》。
Before I turn it over to the crowd, would you like to just say a few words about your next book?
在我把它交给大家之前，您能简单介绍一下您的下一本书吗？
I know you’ve covered some parts of it already.
我知道您已经介绍了其中的某些部分。
Yes.
是的。
The next book has been, unfortunately, 10 years in production because it depends on assembling this very big database: detailed genealogy of people over 300 years in England.
不幸的是，下一本书已经制作了 10 年，因为它依赖于组装这个非常大的数据库：英国 300 多年来人们的详细家谱。
I was really motivated by this question of, to what extent does genetics actually determine social outcomes?
我真的被这个问题所激励：遗传学在多大程度上真正决定了社会结果？
This book does a detailed study of all the predictions of a genetic model.
本书对遗传模型的所有预测进行了详细研究。
It looks at things like, does birth order matter?
它着眼于诸如出生顺序重要吗？
Does gender matter?
性别重要吗？
Does your mother better predict your outcomes compared to your father?
与你父亲相比，你母亲能更好地预测你的结果吗？
Does family size matter?
家庭规模重要吗？
If your parents die, does that influence your life course?
如果你的父母去世了，这会影响你的人生轨迹吗？
What about your grandparents?
你的祖父母呢？
Can they interact?
他们可以互动吗？
The conclusion in all of these studies is, we’re mainly the product of our genetics and randomness.
所有这些研究的结论是，我们主要是遗传和随机性的产物。
Randomness is a huge component as well, and that’s why I say, amazingly, we seem to, in a society like England, for 300 years have largely lived in a meritocracy.
随机性也是一个重要的组成部分，这就是为什么我说，令人惊讶的是，我们似乎在像英国这样的社会中，300 年来基本上生活在精英政治中。
What would be the characteristics of meritocracy?
精英政治的特点是什么？
It would be a society where genetics and randomness would be the only forces that really mattered.
在这个社会中，基因和随机性将是唯一真正重要的力量。
That’s what the new book then is all about.
这就是新书的全部内容。
One message to this is, don’t spend a lot of time with your children.
对此的一条信息是，不要花太多时间和你的孩子在一起。
It doesn’t matter.
没关系。
COWEN: Greg Clark, thank you very much.
考恩：格雷格·克拉克，非常感谢你。
Q&A
问答
I have a number of questions, but I can constrict.
我有很多问题，但我可以限制一下。
I’ll start with the most important ones.
我将从最重要的开始。
Your wage-price series in A Farewell to Alms takes a very bare-bones view of what should be in the consumption basket: food, housing, clothing, and then that’s it.
你在《告别施舍》中的工资价格系列对消费篮子里应该有的东西采取了非常简单的看法：食物、住房、衣服，仅此而已。
So, you have a very low estimate of living standards, but other, more expansive definitions, like Mokyr’s, come to very large increases in income from the time of Hastings to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
因此，你对生活水平的估计非常低，但其他更广泛的定义，比如莫基尔的定义，从黑斯廷斯时代到工业革命开始，收入大幅增加。
Do you have a philosophical reason for taking a very narrow construction?
您采用非常狭隘的结构有哲学原因吗？
And are you concerned that if you took that same very narrow construction into the present day, you would arrive at clearly absurd results, like we have barely improved in living standards over time?
您是否担心，如果您将同样非常狭隘的结构应用到今天，您会得出明显荒谬的结果，就像我们的生活水平随着时间的推移几乎没有提高一样？
When you construct these living standards series, you just have to look at what people actually consumed.
当你构建这些生活水平系列时，你只需要看看人们实际消费了什么。
Consumption of things like books in Europe in 1400 would be 0.001 of a percent.
1400 年欧洲书籍之类的消费量为 0.001%。
If you were to take someone with our or Tyler’s tastes, for example, and construct a cost of living index for him, it would show radical transformation occurring, actually, in the 15th century, when books became one-twentieth of their price, and books would be an important component of his living expenses.
例如，如果你以我们或泰勒的品味为例子，为他构建一个生活成本指数，就会显示出根本性的转变实际上发生在15世纪，当时书籍的价格变成了其价格的二十分之一，书籍将成为他生活开支的重要组成部分。
But that series is actually constructed for the average person in England.
但该系列实际上是为英国普通人设计的。
What happens then is that you really don’t see much technological advance on these types of indices in Europe, because the advances that are occurring — and they’re quite significant — are about tiny shares of consumption.
接下来会发生的情况是，你在欧洲确实看不到此类指数的太多技术进步，因为正在发生的进步 ——而且它们相当重要—— 只涉及很小的消费份额。
That’s just a general problem, that if we weight technological change in economic terms, there’s this tyranny of the majority, which is what do the majority want to consume?
这只是一个普遍的问题，如果我们用经济术语来衡量技术变革，就会出现多数人的暴政，这就是大多数人想要消费的东西？
That’s determining what the measured rate of technological advance would be.
这决定了技术进步的测量速度。
That’s one argument about, again, why the Industrial Revolution seems so abrupt, is that there had been a lot of earlier technological advance, but not in the commodities that the average person consumes.
这又是关于为什么工业革命看起来如此突然的一个论点，因为早期的技术进步很多，但普通人消费的商品却没有进步。
What was unique about the Industrial Revolution was that finally, something like clothing now gets this huge advance, and that then transforms the economy.
工业革命的独特之处在于，最终，像服装这样的东西现在得到了巨大的进步，然后改变了经济。
That’s why that series was done that way.
这就是为什么该系列是这样完成的。
Next question.
下一个问题。
Thank you very much for stopping by.
非常感谢您的光临。
I was struck by your example of the Chinese fiancé that was wearing the Scottish kilt alongside his Vietnamese — one of his best men.
你的中国未婚夫穿着苏格兰短裙和他的越南人——他最好的男人之一——的例子让我印象深刻。
Best man, yes.
最好的男人，是的。
It ties into the point you made about assimilation.
这与你关于同化的观点有关。
In your work, what factors encourage assimilation into culture, into norms of the home country versus the opposite?
在你的工作中，哪些因素会鼓励你融入祖国的文化和规范，而不是相反的文化？
And do you think that’s related to economic incentives, or is it more about culture?
您认为这与经济激励有关，还是更多与文化有关？
Thank you.
谢谢。
As I say, I’ve studied a lot about the upper class in Britain.
正如我所说，我对英国上层阶级进行了很多研究。
When you see the history and this genealogy of these families — you have Jewish families arriving in Britain in 1800, where their descendant becomes a bishop in the Church of England within three generations.
当你看到这些家族的历史和家谱时，你会发现犹太家族于 1800 年抵达英国，他们的后代在三代之内就成为了英国国教的主教。
You do see this, as I say, surprising plasticity, but other families remaining firmly Jewish, but in other ways, becoming highly English.
正如我所说，你确实看到了令人惊讶的可塑性，但其他家庭仍然坚定地是犹太人，但在其他方面却变得高度英国化。
A nice example of that is in 1685.
1685 年就是一个很好的例子。
The Huguenots were driven out of France, and they arrived in Britain.
胡格诺派被赶出法国，到达英国。
They constituted about 1 percent of the English population at that stage.
他们约占当时英国人口的百分之一。
You can see them within one or two generations completely culturally assimilated.
你可以看到他们在一两代之内就完全被文化同化了。
You can see that in the names they called their children and in the women that they married or the men that they married.
你可以从他们给孩子起的名字以及他们结婚的女人或男人身上看到这一点。
You actually see, as I say, this complete and rapid cultural assimilation and then a movement into the elites of British society, where, amazingly, the descendants of that group are still four times more likely to go to Oxford or Cambridge than the rest of the people in English society, even though, culturally, 200 years earlier, they lost any distinctiveness.
正如我所说，你实际上看到了这种完全而快速的文化同化，然后进入英国社会的精英阶层，令人惊讶的是，该群体的后裔进入牛津或剑桥的可能性仍然是英国社会其他人的四倍，尽管在文化上，200年前他们已经失去了任何独特性。
As I say, I’m impressed when something like Britain — how rapidly that assimilation occurs, even in my own family.
正如我所说，当像英国这样的事情发生时，我印象深刻——即使在我自己的家庭中，同化发生得如此之快。
My grandfathers were both born in Ireland.
我的祖父都出生在爱尔兰。
We were in Scotland as Irish Catholics.
我们在苏格兰是爱尔兰天主教徒。
We didn’t mix with Protestants.
我们没有与新教徒混在一起。
We didn’t talk to Protestants.
我们没有和新教徒交谈。
We had all kinds of weird theories about Protestants and their joyless life.
关于新教徒和他们毫无乐趣的生活，我们有各种奇怪的理论。
I have a brother who married a woman who’s Protestant.
我有一个兄弟娶了一个新教徒女人。
His children are functionally completely Protestant.
他的孩子们在功能上完全是新教徒。
You see, even in this period, that by moving into the upper class in Scotland, which is heavily Protestant, effectively, you see that assimilation.
你会看到，即使在这个时期，通过进入新教盛行的苏格兰上层阶级，你实际上会看到这种同化。
What I am impressed with is just how rapidly people can typically assimilate into other societies, except, I think, in cases where people aren’t succeeding economically and socially.
令我印象深刻的是，人们通常能够以多快的速度融入其他社会，我认为，除非人们在经济和社会上没有取得成功。
That then becomes this barrier to assimilation.
这就成为同化的障碍。
But people who are successful within new societies — it’s just astonishing how plastic the culture of different societies is.
但在新社会中取得成功的人——不同社会的文化的可塑性令人惊讶。
As I say, I never thought I would go to a wedding in Scotland with people wearing kilts because that was completely not the culture that we came from.
正如我所说，我从未想过我会和穿着短裙的人一起去苏格兰参加婚礼，因为那完全不是我们来自的文化。
Hello.
你好。
Thank you so much for coming and giving the talk.
非常感谢您莅临并发表演讲。
It was an honor to listen in person.
能够亲自聆听是一种荣幸。
I learned a lot from your research.
我从你的研究中学到了很多东西。
Having said that, I really liked the example in your research where you used the last name Smith — how long it took for somebody named Smith to get to places like Oxford.
话虽如此，我真的很喜欢你研究中的例子，其中你使用了姓氏史密斯 ——一个名叫史密斯的人需要多长时间才能到达像牛津这样的地方。
It was about 200 years.
大约有200年了。
I loved that research method, but also the conclusion is a bit deterministic.
我喜欢这种研究方法，但结论也有点确定性。
It’s how do you manage that social mobility?
这就是你如何管理这种社会流动性？
I think on that, I’m a bit more on the side of Dr. Cowen, where international mobility might have a higher rate of results than the examples in your research.
我认为在这一点上，我更站在考恩博士一边，他认为国际流动性可能比你研究中的例子有更高的结果。
As far as I know, the research is mostly from the Anglo world, mobility within the Anglo world or Europe to Anglo and other ways around.
据我所知，研究主要来自盎格鲁世界，盎格鲁世界或欧洲到盎格鲁的流动性以及其他方式。
You used the example of India, and I think the caste system is unique to there, but what about the countries that are similar in terms of base of living standard — I’m from Bangladesh — places like Bangladesh or Sri Lanka?
你用了印度的例子，我认为种姓制度是印度独有的，但是那些生活水平相似的国家 ——“我来自孟加拉国”——比如孟加拉国或斯里兰卡？
Also, in recent research in immigration we see in the United States, immigrants from the MENA region are very successful.
此外，在美国最近的移民研究中，来自中东和北非地区的移民非常成功。
Do you think if we change the directions of migration and basis of living standard from this donor country, will the results look more optimistic?
您认为如果我们改变这个捐助国的移民方向和生活水平基础，结果会不会看起来更乐观？
The second part of the question is, there is research done by Johannes Haushofer, also a Nordic economist, and he has a project where he takes students from Uganda — so we can get around the pre-selection problem — and he funds them to come to Germany to study.
问题的第二部分是，约翰内斯·豪斯霍费尔（Johannes Haushofer）进行了一项研究，他也是一位北欧经济学家，他有一个项目，他从乌干达招收学生 ——“这样我们就可以绕过预选问题”——并资助他们来德国学习。
Maybe policy prescription–wise, do you see some benefits in this solution to get out of that deterministic trap?
也许从政策处方角度来看，您是否认为该解决方案有一些摆脱确定性陷阱的好处？
Thank you.
谢谢。
Let me talk first about the determinism trap.
我先谈谈决定论陷阱。
There’s a fundamental philosophical issue here, which is, I’ve spent a lot of time in economics, and economics really is a dismal science in the sense of how little economics has achieved, and how little we can predict about economies or about the future of economies.
这里有一个基本的哲学问题，那就是，我在经济学上花了很多时间，而经济学确实是一门令人沮丧的科学，因为经济学取得的成就是多么少，我们对经济或经济未来的预测又是多么少。
One of the stunning things about social mobility is how deterministic at the group level that this is, and how in the English data, you can predict what will happen to people 300 years later based on their position now.
关于社会流动性的令人惊叹的事情之一是，它在群体层面上具有多么确定性，以及如何在英国数据中，根据人们现在的地位来预测 300 年后人们会发生什么。
I think of that as a stunning gain, maybe unlike Tyler here.
我认为这是一个惊人的收获，也许与泰勒不同。
I think of that as the only path forward.
我认为这是唯一的前进道路。
As I say, what I was stunned by was, in terms of social mobility, how much mechanical deterministic structure you had in society.
正如我所说，就社会流动性而言，令我震惊的是，社会中有多少机械决定论结构。
Now, I secondly agree that people moving between societies is an enormous source of economic gains and economic mobility.
现在，我第二同意，人们在社会之间流动是经济收益和经济流动性的巨大来源。
The relative position, though, seems to very substantially move with people when they move across societies.
然而，当人们跨社会流动时，相对位置似乎会随着人们的移动而发生很大的变化。
I agree that it also has these very important policy things that we have to think of, which is, if America takes in more immigrants, it will benefit the world at no cost.
我同意它还有这些非常重要的政策问题是我们必须考虑的，那就是，如果美国接纳更多的移民，它将不惜一切代价造福世界。
A lot of substantial gains will be made by moving people around in the modern world, and that’s something we should think about in terms of thinking about policy in different countries.
在现代世界中，人员流动将会带来很多实质性的收益，这是我们在思考不同国家的政策时应该考虑的问题。
I agree that substantively, there’s not a lot you can do within a society to change people’s relative outcomes, but there is a lot you can do for people by moving them from one society to another, and that’s the area that we should think about in terms of economic policy.
我同意，从本质上讲，在一个社会中你无法做太多事情来改变人们的相对结果，但你可以通过将人们从一个社会转移到另一个社会来为人们做很多事情，这是我们在经济政策方面应该考虑的领域。
Thanks a lot.
多谢。
Thank you.
谢谢。
I have some related questions on how you’re measuring social persistence.
我有一些关于如何衡量社交持久性的相关问题。
The persistence of social status is the rank-rank correlation over time, which means that if there is error in measuring the status of somebody, it tends to increase social mobility because there’s less correlation.
社会地位的持久性是随时间推移的等级-等级相关性，这意味着如果衡量某人的地位存在错误，它往往会增加社会流动性，因为相关性较小。
Are you concerned that the degree of error has changed over time, such that it’s higher in the 1800s, for example, than compared to today as some recent work on American inequality has demonstrated?
您是否担心误差程度随着时间的推移而发生变化，例如，正如最近一些关于美国不平等问题的研究所证明的那样，1800 年代的误差程度比今天更高？
Secondly, when people are added to the population through immigration, if they’re, for example, say, at the bottom, then it would tend to bias people’s social mobility upwards because now there’re different people in the mix.
其次，当人们通过移民加入到人口中时，如果他们处于底层，那么人们的社会流动性往往会向上倾斜，因为现在有不同的人在其中。
How do you account for that?
你如何解释这一点？
And how do your methods avoid this?
您的方法如何避免这种情况？
It turns out, a lot of the new book — there’s a whole section which says people have not thought about errors enough in terms of measuring social mobility.
事实证明，新书中的很多内容 ——有一整节都说人们在衡量社会流动性方面没有充分考虑错误。
One classic thing is, people typically, if you go to Scandinavia, the income correlation between parents and children or the years-of-education correlation between parents and children is low, implying that these are very high-mobility societies.
一件经典的事情是，人们通常如果你去斯堪的纳维亚半岛，父母和孩子之间的收入相关性或父母和孩子之间的教育年限相关性很低，这意味着这些社会是流动性非常高的社会。
The problem is the errors involved in these measures.
问题是这些措施中存在错误。
Measuring someone’s education level by years of education is a very crude approximation.
通过受教育年限来衡量一个人的教育水平是一个非常粗略的近似值。
It really tells you relatively little, particularly in a society like Denmark, where there’s enormous access to education and huge subsidies of education.
它确实告诉你的信息相对较少，特别是在像丹麦这样的社会，那里有大量的教育机会和巨额的教育补贴。
So, a lot of the book is saying, how do we correct for these errors?
所以，书中很多内容都在说，我们如何纠正这些错误？
It turns out, that’s what happens when you do correct for these errors.
事实证明，当你纠正这些错误时就会发生这种情况。
What you find is much, much lower rates of social mobility, and also that it doesn’t vary between Scandinavia and England now, or England in the 18th century.
你会发现社会流动性要低得多，而且斯堪的纳维亚半岛和现在的英国，或者 18 世纪的英国之间没有什么不同。
I think, in social mobility studies, that any report that isn’t taking into account that all of these are very partial and imperfect measures is just not telling you a lot about the true nature of social mobility.
我认为，在社会流动性研究中，任何没有考虑到所有这些都是非常片面和不完善的措施的报告都没有告诉你很多关于社会流动性的真实本质。
That was the first point.
这是第一点。
The second point was, what about admixtures within populations and how that would influence measures of social mobility.
第二点是，人口内部的混合情况如何以及这将如何影响社会流动性的衡量标准。
Fortunately, for most of these societies, these would tend to be relatively small changes because it’s a small share of the population in any generation that is now coming anew.
幸运的是，对于这些社会中的大多数来说，这些变化往往相对较小，因为在任何一代人中，这些变化只占人口的一小部分。
But you do see now in England a dramatic transformation, where the white British now are the lower class of English society.
但你现在确实在英国看到了巨大的转变，英国白人现在是英国社会的下层阶级。
There’s emerging very substantial new upper classes, which are Africans, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, and particularly Hindu Indians and Chinese.
大量的新上层阶级正在兴起，其中包括非洲人、孟加拉国人、巴基斯坦人，尤其是信奉印度教的印度人和中国人。
As I say, it’s an amazing transformation of a society by immigration.
正如我所说，移民对社会带来了惊人的转变。
Because of fertility differences, where immigrants tend to have much higher rates of fertility, a very substantial fraction of 15-year-olds now in a society like England are from these other origins.
由于生育率差异，即移民的生育率往往要高得多，因此在像英格兰这样的社会中，目前 15 岁的年轻人中有很大一部分来自其他来源。
Actually, it’s been an enormous benefit to English society, but it would have influenced things like trying to calculate social mobility rates when you have all of these new groups arriving in the society and actually being very successful.
事实上，这对英国社会来说是一个巨大的好处，但当所有这些新群体进入社会并且实际上非常成功时，它会影响诸如尝试计算社会流动率之类的事情。
I agree.
我同意。
That’s actually really very much a phenomenon of post-1960, or something like that, in Britain.
这实际上是 1960 年后英国的一种现象，或者类似的现象。
Thank you, Professor Clark.
谢谢您，克拉克教授。
It was a lot of fun.
这很有趣。
What do you think are the practical implications of your work for finding a spouse in the modern world?
您认为您的工作对于在现代世界寻找配偶有什么实际意义？
I’m not sure what to advise you.
我不知道该给你什么建议。
I could tell you that I met my wife when we were both graduate students at Harvard.
我可以告诉你，当我们都是哈佛大学的研究生时，我认识了我的妻子。
I was the first man she met at Harvard, so maybe she wasn’t particularly selective.
我是她在哈佛遇到的第一个男人，所以也许她并没有特别挑剔。
What can you say?
你能说什么？
You see a general pattern.
您会看到一个一般模式。
Do we know that that pattern makes people happy?
我们知道这种模式会让人们快乐吗？
Maybe everyone with highly assortative marriage is actually unhappy, and if instead they had chosen a spouse on grounds of romance or something else like that, they would be much better off, so I can’t give you any advice on marriage.
也许每个高度选型婚姻的人实际上都是不幸福的，如果他们以浪漫或其他类似的理由来选择配偶，他们的生活会好得多，所以我无法给你任何关于婚姻的建议。
All I can do is say I can predict the kind of person that you’re going to marry.
我所能做的就是说我可以预测你会嫁给什么样的人。
Thank you.
谢谢。
I wanted to ask about an ongoing debate between James Heckman and Raj Chetty on the role of neighborhoods versus family composition.
我想问一下詹姆斯·赫克曼（James Heckman）和拉杰·切蒂（Raj Chetty）之间关于社区与家庭组成的作用正在进行的争论。
James Heckman believes, okay, family composition really matters.
詹姆斯·赫克曼（James Heckman）认为，好吧，家庭组成确实很重要。
Listening to this talk, you’d say, maybe not.
听了这个演讲，你可能会说，也许不是。
Then Chetty says that neighborhoods really matter, and I’m wondering if you take stands on these things, since it seems that there is considerable variation at the neighborhood level, but then I’m told, at the national level, it all balances out, so there’s no variation over time.
然后切蒂说，社区确实很重要，我想知道你是否在这些事情上采取立场，因为似乎在社区层面存在相当大的差异，但后来我被告知，在国家层面，一切都是平衡的，所以随着时间的推移没有变化。
What a coincidence this would be in social science.
这在社会科学中是多么巧合啊。
I just wanted to hear your thoughts on some of these technical recent matters.
我只是想听听您对最近的一些技术问题的想法。
Thank you.
谢谢。
There is a chapter in the new manuscript which examines exactly this issue about, does it matter what place you’re born to in England?
新手稿中有一个章节专门研究了这个问题，即你出生在英国哪个地方重要吗？
As I say, the North is much less successful on every dimension: education, output, whether people are employed or not, health, longevity.
正如我所说，北方在各个方面都不太成功：教育、产出、人们是否就业、健康、寿命。
It’s bad somehow to be born in the North.
出生在北方是件坏事。
But with this comprehensive genealogical database, we know all about everyone’s parents and stuff like that, and I can tell you that there’s actually very little cost to being born in the North.
但是有了这个全面的家谱数据库，我们就可以了解每个人的父母之类的信息，我可以告诉你，在北方出生的成本实际上很低。
It’s mostly still predicted — overwhelmingly predicted — from the status of your parents.
大部分仍然是根据你父母的状况来预测的——“绝大多数是预测的”。
It just turns out, there are many more high-status people in the South of England.
事实证明，英格兰南部还有更多地位较高的人。
Now, one puzzle is that this movement to the South of England of higher-status people has been going on since the 18th century.
现在，一个令人困惑的问题是，这种地位较高的人向英格兰南部的迁移自 18 世纪以来一直在进行。
I don’t actually understand, why did everyone want to move to the areas around London and the South of England from such an early date in Britain?
我其实不明白，为什么英国这么早就大家都想搬到伦敦周边和英格兰南部地区呢？
Even in the Industrial Revolution period, the balance of migration is of skilled people out of the North and to the South, and the migrants from the South to the North tended to be much less skilled.
即使在工业革命时期，移民的平衡也是由北方和南方的技术人员组成，而从南方到北方的移民往往技术水平较低。
So basically, the story for England is, there is this process of selection.
所以基本上，英格兰的故事是，有一个选择的过程。
It turns out that that interestingly also occurs in other parts of Europe.
有趣的是，这种情况也发生在欧洲其他地区。
It’s amazing now with modern markets and stuff like that that in almost every place in Europe, you’ll find high-income areas and low-income areas and endogenously developing.
现在令人惊奇的是，在欧洲几乎每个地方都有现代市场和类似的东西，你会发现高收入地区和低收入地区以及内生发展。
But as I say, as far as we can tell from this British data, there isn’t that much cost.
但正如我所说，据我们从英国的数据来看，成本并没有那么高。
I was born in a mining village in Scotland.
我出生在苏格兰的一个采矿村。
I like to think I escaped my background.
我喜欢认为我逃离了我的背景。
Empirically, the average person born in that mining village is going to do pretty poorly.
根据经验，出生在那个矿村的普通人的生活会很差。
But there is this question, is it all just about family background, or is it about the opportunities that people get offered?
但有一个问题，这仅仅是家庭背景的问题，还是人们获得的机会的问题？
Last question.
最后一个问题。
I believe your chosen mechanism for it transmitting over time to be, in fact, genetics.
我相信你选择的随着时间推移传播的机制实际上是遗传学。
How do you reconcile the very low estimates of heritability from genome-wide association studies with the much higher estimates that come from twin studies?
您如何协调全基因组关联研究中极低的遗传力估计值与双胞胎研究中的高得多的估计值？
These genome-wide studies, amazingly, even with something like, is it up to 4 million people that they have genotyped, where they have measures of their educational outcomes, still don’t identify that well what the genetic basis of this is that we know exists from these twin studies.
令人惊讶的是，这些全基因组研究，即使对多达 400 万人进行了基因分型，对他们的教育成果进行了衡量，但仍然没有很好地确定我们从这些双胞胎研究中知道的遗传基础是什么。
In some sense, what it’s saying is, these studies — we still have very imperfect measures.
从某种意义上说，这些研究表明我们的措施仍然非常不完善。
Even though they’re identifying a thousand different loci on the genome that are affecting educational outcomes, we’re still somehow not capturing everything that’s happening here.
尽管他们在基因组上识别出了一千个影响教育成果的不同基因座，但我们仍然无法捕捉到这里发生的一切。
They’ve also studied whether it’s combinatoric effects that really matter, but I think they’ve largely been ruled out, that it’s mostly just the additive impact of what’s happening at each particular location.
他们还研究了组合效应是否真正重要，但我认为它们基本上已被排除，因为这主要只是每个特定地点发生的事情的附加影响。
So, all I can say is that it has this weird implication that you may need studies that are bigger than the whole of humanity to actually finally figure out what are all these genetic influences because there are such rare permutations that are actually affecting outcomes.
所以，我只能说，它有一个奇怪的含义，你可能需要比整个人类更大规模的研究，才能真正最终弄清楚所有这些遗传影响是什么，因为有如此罕见的排列实际上会影响结果。
It also, actually surprisingly, means that if you have very small populations, say Native Americans, that you might not be able to do these kinds of studies because you wouldn’t have enough people to actually be able to say very much about, say, the genetic basis of illnesses or the genetic basis of height and other things like that.
事实上，令人惊讶的是，这还意味着，如果你的人口非常少，美洲原住民说，你可能无法进行此类研究，因为你没有足够的人来真正能够谈论疾病的遗传基础或身高的遗传基础等类似问题。
But it is a puzzle in that literature, which is that even with this amount of data, and even though knowing that there is this genetic basis that is quite strong, they still cannot actually find mechanically what the location of that basis is.
但该文献中的一个难题是，即使有这么多的数据，即使知道存在这种相当强大的遗传基础，他们仍然无法实际上机械地找到该基础的位置。
Greg Clark, thank you again.
格雷格·克拉克，再次感谢你。
Big hand for Greg.
格雷格的大手。
Thank you.
谢谢。
Photos by Chris Williams, Zoeica Images
照片由 Chris Williams、Zoeica Images 拍摄