Old Money families often claim that wealth stays with the wealthy, but we've all seen how quickly the winds of fortune can shift, especially in this age of tech stocks and economic turmoil.
But those Old Money families think this way because it's all they know, and for many of them life without wealth is but a bad dream.
In fact, several families in Florence have managed to hold on tight to their fortunes for nearly 600 years, according to research conducted by Italian economists Guglielmo Barone and Sauro Mocetti.
Using tax records from the 1427 Census of Florence all the way through the 2011 fiscal year Barone and Mocetti discovered the richest families in Florence have had the same surnames for the last 600 years.
This system wouldn't really work in most other cities in the world, but Florencian family surnames are "usually highly regional and tend to pass on linearly", so they're most likely part of the same rich families six centuries later.
Read The Richest Families In Florence In 1427 Are Still The Richest Families In Florence here
povetry stays with the poor?
Would be interesting if a similar effect may also be observed in the United States of America (or any other democracy), where "all men are created equal"... but presumably born with spoons of different material in their mouth...