In Italy, it’s hard to get a seat at the high-roller’s table — they’ve all been reserved and occupied for 600 hundred years. The wealthiest families in 15th-century Florence have essentially retained their positions for 600 hundred years, according to a study released in May by Bank of Italy economists Guglielmo Barone and Sauro Mocetti which compared data on Florentine taxpayers in 1427 to those from 2011. The study flies in the face of evidence which suggests that the related earnings advantages disappear after several generations. It also poses serious questions on the ease of social mobility. Gianni Riotta, a columnist for La Stampa newspaper in Rome, believes the root cause of this to be the closed economic system among the elite, who pass on their companies and the clout that comes with it and are not as welcoming to new entrants. More than one-third of Italy’s richest people inherited their fortunes, compared with just 29% in the U.S. and 2 percent in China, according to a 2014 study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics. The issue extends beyond Italy, with 65% of German bnaires having inherited their wealth. The pattern is symptomatic of a stalling economy, says Antonio Schizzerotto, scientific director of the Research Institute for the Evaluation of Public Policies in Trento. He tells Bloomberg that if this inequality continues, it could further constrain the EU’s ability to revive growth. "Societies characterised by a high transmission of socioeconomic status across generations are not only more likely to be perceived as ‘unfair’ they may also be less efficient as they waste the skills of those coming from disadvantaged backgrounds,” concludes Barone and Mocetti’s study.