Pathways to Social Inequality
Date
2021
Authors
Haynie, Hannah J.
Kavanagh, Patrick
Jordan, Fiona M
Ember, Carol R
Gray, Russell D
Greenhill, Simon
Kirby, Kathryn R
Kushnick, Geoff
Low, Bobbi S
Tuff, Ty
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Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Abstract
Social inequality is ubiquitous in contemporary human societies, and has deleterious social and ecological impacts. However, the factors that shape the emergence and maintenance of inequality remain widely debated. Here we conduct a global analysis of pathways to inequality by comparing 408 non-industrial societies in the anthropological record (described largely between 1860 and 1960) that vary in degree of inequality. We apply structural equation modelling to open-access environmental and ethnographic data and explore two alternative models varying in the links among factors proposed by prior literature, including environmental conditions, resource intensification, wealth transmission, population size and a well-documented form of inequality: social class hierarchies. We found support for a model in which the probability of social class hierarchies is associated directly with increases in population size, the propensity to use intensive agriculture and domesticated large mammals, unigeniture inheritance of real property and hereditary political succession. We suggest that influence of environmental variables on inequality is mediated by measures of resource intensification, which, in turn, may influence inequality directly or indirectly via effects on wealth transmission variables. Overall, we conclude that in our analysis a complex network of effects are associated with social class hierarchies.
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Keywords
Social inequality, environmental conditions, resource intensification, wealth transmission, structural equation modelling
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Source
Evolutionary Human Sciences
Type
Journal article
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Access Statement
Open Access
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Creative Commons Attribution License
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