Rethinking New and Old Money

Abstract Stories about elites often center “old” and “new” money. They trace a basic template: old money falls, new money rises, and the cycle repeats. Drawing on case studies mostly from the U.S. and empirical studies from around the world, this chapter gives a more accurate simplification: new money is rarely brand new, old money often persists, and everyone marries each other anyway. It then proposes an analytic definition of old and new money based on the distribution of resources across kinship networks. “Old money” elites are born into kinship networks drenched in diversified resources, back through generations and laterally across siblings and cousins. “New money” elites are born into sparsely resourced kinship networks and amass undiversified fortunes in their lifetimes. Elite populations weave together both extremes and everyone in between. Conceptualizing old and new money in terms of kinship networks adds analytic precision and historical depth to studies of change and cohesion in elite worlds.