Anti-Parris Mobility:
1681-1690
| 10% Change | Total |
| Down | 7 |
| No Change | 10 |
| Up | 7 |
| Grand Total | 24 |
The results can be hand counted or found by means of a pivot table, using the Data menu. They can be displayed in a pie chart.
There was little upward mobility among the twenty-four anti-Parris persisters who appeared in both the 1681 and 1690 tax lists. Fourteen taxpayers experienced movement of 10%; of these, the number who fell in their ranking exactly equaled the number whose ranking improved. The largest group, ten taxpayers, showed no change.
Users can also identify how groups within the anti-Parris faction — the wealthy, middling, and poor — changed in standing in a similar manner as was done with the pro-Parris faction. Sorting the twenty-four anti-Parris persisters in descending order of wealth reveals that the majority of the well-to-do top quartile of anti-Parris villagers in 1681 either held their own over the course of the 1680s. However, about a third of them had declined in their standing by 1690. On the other hand, there was a tendency for those in the middling 25%-75% ranks to improve their condition, especially those whose ranking in 1681 placed them in the modest 25%-50% quartile.
Users can refine anti-Parris mobility by examining where individuals in different quartile groups in 1690 had been a decade earlier: select both the 1681 percent and the 1690 percent columns, then sort the 1690 percent column in descending order. In contrast to the top quartile of pro-Parris taxpayers in 1690, not a single member of the top quartile of anti-Parris taxpayers in 1690 had risen into that elite from a lower quartile. On the other hand, three middling taxpayers in 1690 had fallen during the decade by at least ten percentile points out of the 1681 top quartile.
Although only a minority of the 1695 anti-Parris petitioners were assessed on both the 1681 and 1690 tax list, rank and percentile analysis does not offer much support to the notion that opponents of the Salem witch hunt were eclipsing their adversaries. Contrary to Salem Possessed, in the years prior to the witchcraft outbreak, those who would oppose the trials were not noticeably improving their economic standing.
What does a longer chronological view tell us about the economic mobility of Salem Village's factions? Download the 1695 Tax Data Set and click Next.