Journal of Economic Literature
ISSN 0022-0515 (Print) | ISSN 2328-8175 (Online)
Review of Ten Thousand Years of Inequality: The Archaeology of Wealth Differences
Journal of Economic Literature
vol. 59,
no. 3, September 2021
(pp. 1023–29)
Abstract
Archeologists are actively working to quantitatively measure income and wealth inequality in ancient history based on available data, some of them being quite sophisticated. Timothy A. Kohler and Michael E. Smith's Ten Thousand Years of Inequality: The Archaeology of Wealth Differences presents existing measurement efforts and insightful discussions of the challenges faced, on all continents except Oceania. These first exercises should help us over time understand better the evolution of inequality in ancient history and its determinants. Understanding better the effects of differences in institutions in the ancient past should be a crucial next step.Citation
Roland, Gerard. 2021. "Review of Ten Thousand Years of Inequality: The Archaeology of Wealth Differences." Journal of Economic Literature, 59 (3): 1023–29. DOI: 10.1257/jel.20201522Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- D31 Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions
- D63 Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
- N30 Economic History: Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy: General, International, or Comparative
- O15 Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
- Z13 Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification