Throughout the world, inheritance builds inequality

	These Hadza hunter-gatherers (in Tanzania) make their living by a combination of knowledge of the habits of prey species, familiarity with the location of fruits and tubers, simple technology, good health and... Click here for more information.

Trust funds, family homes and other forms of inherited wealth give people a leg up in modern, industrialized societies, widening the gap between the haves and have-nots. New research suggests that inheriting wealth also encourages inequality in other societies--though it depends on the type of wealth in question, researchers report in the Oct. 29 issue of Science. Monique Borgerhoff Mulder and colleagues have built a model describing how the transmission of wealth from one generation to another affects economic inequality in small-scale societies from around the world, such as those of hunter-gatherer, herding and farming populations. The authors considered three types of wealth: “relational” (based on social networks), “material” (based on land and livestock), and “embodied” (based on physical or intellectual capacity). They found that inheritance and inequality are both substantial among pastoral and small-scale agricultural societies, such as the Dagota of Tanzania or the East Anglians of England. But, they are limited among horticultural and foraging peoples, such as the Pimbwe of Bolivia or the Ache of Paraguay. Thus, differences in the ways that people derive their livelihood, as well as differences in the norms and institutions making up the economic systems both contribute to the level of inequality in a society. The authors speculate that the importance of inherited wealth, and in turn, economic inequality, may eventually decrease in the emerging knowledge-based economy. In a related Perspective, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson ponder the possibility that institutions that enabled inheriting wealth may have preceded the rise of agriculture.

Article #7: "Intergenerational Wealth Transmission and the Dynamics of Inequality in Small-Scale Societies," by M. Borgerhoff Mulder; A. Bell; G. Clark; R. McElreath at University of California, Davis in Davis, CA; S. Bowles at Santa Fe Institute in Santa Fe, NM; S. Bowles at University of Siena in Santa Fe, NM; T. Hertz at International University College of Turin in Turin, Italy; J. Beise at United Nations in New York, NY; I. Fazzio; R. Sear at London School of Economics in London, UK; M. Gurven; E. Schniter; C. von Rueden at University of California, Santa Barbara in Santa Barbara, CA; K. Hill at Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ; P.L. Hooper; H. Kaplan at University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, NM; W. Irons at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL; D. Leonetti; E.A. Smith at University of Washington in Seattle, WA; B. Low at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI; F. Marlowe at Florida State University in Tallahassee, FL; S. Naidu at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA; D. Nolin at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in Chapel Hill, NC; P. Piraino at in Ottawa, ON, Canada; R. Quinlan at Washington State University in Pullman, WA; M. Shenk at University of Missouri in Columbia, MO; P. Wiessner at University of Utah in Salt Lake City, UT.