Notaries were of course literate, and this seemed to furnish great opportunity for social mobility.
The bond between the generations was weaker and there was considerable inter-generational social mobility in both the countryside and the cities.
One way of avoiding this downward social mobility was a straightforward exchange of daughters between two families, with each marrying the heir of the other.
Future research should address the complex connection between social mobility and other forms of relations and transfers between generations.
What it does create, however, is space for upward social mobility for those at the lower rungs of society.
This is not to suggest that such women strove for social mobility through hypergamy, although the evidence below indicates that some clearly did.
Thus evidence that poverty is not always chronic is not evidence of progress towards equal social mobility.
However, these data are concerned with the male sibs' current occupational class and, unlike the scientists, their social mobility may not be complete.
