Roots of Inequality

Oded Galor, Marc Klemp and Daniel Wainstock

No 10496, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Why does inequality vary across societies? We advance the hypothesis that in a market economy, where earning differentials reflect variations in productive traits, a significant component of the differences in income inequality across societies can be attributed to variation in societal interpersonal diversity, shaped during the prehistoric Out-of-Africa Migration. The roots of income inequality within the US population provide supporting evidence for the hypothesis. It suggests that variation in income inequality across groups of individuals originating from different ancestral backgrounds can be traced to the degree of diversity of their ancestral populations as was carved in the course of the dispersal of humanity from Africa.

Keywords: inequality; diversity; culture; out-of-Africa migration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D60 O10 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo and nep-gro
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Related works:
Working Paper: Roots of Inequality (2023)
Working Paper: Roots of Inequality (2023)
Working Paper: Roots of Inequality (2023)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10496

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