Once elite, always elite? Social mobility of the Dutch elite, 1500-1700.

Social mobility is an often discussed topic in sociological research. However, it is often difficult to take the members of the elite into account when doing research on this topic. The objective of this study is twofold, namely to describe and explain intergenerational social mobility of the elite in the sixteenth and the seventeenth century. Firstly, the descriptive aim of this study is to see to what extent the Dutch elite experienced downward mobility between 1500 and 1700. Secondly, we go beyond the descriptive aim and test hypotheses to see to what extent downward social mobility of the Dutch elite can be explained by individual characteristics and contextual conditions. In this study genealogical information gathered by Dudok van Heel (2008) was used to study the patterns of social mobility of early modern Dutch bourgeois elites. We performed logistic regressions to examine the possible effects of having a different religion than the dominant religion, the father’s wealth, being a first born son, the number of sibling, population growth, economic prosperity, years of war and colonial expansion on the probability of downward mobility. The results show that the amount of downward mobility of the elite between 1500 and 1700 was, against the expectations, quite large, but we found no trend over time. Furthermore, we found that individual characteristics as well as contextual conditions are important predictors of downward mobility. Having a different religion than the dominant religion increased the probability of downward mobility for the members of the elite. The higher the number of siblings, the more years of war and the more colonial expansion, the less likely members of the elite were to be downwardly mobile