Intergenerational and Marriage Mobility of University Professors in the Netherlands During the 19th Century

Ineke Maas,Marco H D Van Leeuwen,Antonie Knigge

doi:10.51964/hlcs9588

Abstract

In this study we ask the question to what extent 19th-century university professors were a closed occupational group in the sense that they had little intergenerational and marriage mobility. We do so in honor of Kees Mandemakers, who is about to retire as a professor, but whose younger family members may follow in his footsteps. We derive competing hypotheses from cultural capital theory and the meritocracy thesis and test them using civil marriage records for the period 1813–1922 in six Dutch provinces (N = 1,180,976 marriages). Although only 4.4% of all university professors had a father in the same occupation, the odds ratio of 331 shows that this is much more likely than to be expected under independence. Similarly, professors were much more likely to marry the daughter of a professor. Compared to other elite occupations the intergenerational immobility of professors was not especially high, but their marriage immobility was exceptional. Cultural capital theory receives more support than the meritocracy thesis. We hope that Mandemakers, Mandemakers and Mandemakers will accept the challenge and investigate whether these findings can be generalized to contemporary society.

Highlights

Whereas Kees Mandemakers is about to retire as a professor, his son Jornt and his nephew Luuk have just joined the faculty
If one would have been able to meet a university professor in the six Dutch provinces that we study during the 19th century, the likelihood that the father of this university professor would have appeared to be a university professor too would have been rather low: only 4.4%
It is clear that hypothesis 1 is supported and hypothesis 3 is not. 19th century university professors did not reach their position based on talent alone

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Whereas Kees Mandemakers is about to retire as a professor, his son Jornt and his nephew Luuk have just joined the faculty. There was relatively little marriage mobility as many people married a partner from within the same social layer (van Leeuwen, Maas, & Mandemakers, 2005). It is unknown whether professors were an exception to or an exemplification of these patterns. We will derive competing hypotheses from cultural capital theory and the meritocracy thesis These hypotheses will be tested using data from Genlias, which in the present shape is a co-creation of Kees Mandemakers and others. We have had the pleasure both of profiting from these data and collaborating with him in writing articles (e.g. Knigge et al, 2014; van Leeuwen et al, 2005; Mandemakers, Maas, & van Leeuwen, 2009) as well as coding occupations (Mandemakers et al, 2013), Mandemakers has ventured in an important historical domain that has not had many visitors in recent times: the historical sociology of education (Mandemakers, 1996; Zijdeman & Mandemakers, 2008)

CULTURAL CAPITAL THEORY

MERITOCRACY THESIS

RESULTS

DISCUSSION