Sponsor:
The first author thanks the Spanish Ministry of Education (grant SEJ2005-
02829/ECON) for financial support. Ortuño-OrtÃn gratefully acknowledges the
support of the Spanish Ministry of Education (grant SEJ2004-00968) and Fundación
BBVA. Romeu is grateful to Fundación BBVA, Ministry of Education (grant
SEJ2006-15172) and Fundación Seneca 03024/PHCS/05
We study the information contained in surnames on the socioeconomic status
of people in Spain. We find that people bearing uncommon surnames tend
to enjoy a higher socioeconomic status than people bearing more common
surnames. This bias is statistically verWe study the information contained in surnames on the socioeconomic status
of people in Spain. We find that people bearing uncommon surnames tend
to enjoy a higher socioeconomic status than people bearing more common
surnames. This bias is statistically very significant and robust to dierent
measures of socioeconomic status, and it holds at the national aggregate level
as well as at the regional level. The paper oers an explanation of a significant
part of such bias as being generated by a signaling behavior by successful
dynasties and a low degree of social mobility.[+][-]