'Technology' plays large role in wealth inheritance
Friday, October 30, 2009 - 10:28
in Mathematics & Economics
A new study reveals the important role inherited wealth plays in sustaining economic inequality in small scale societies. A team of 26 anthropologists, statisticians, and economists based at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico amassed an unprecedented data set allowing 43 estimates of a family's wealth inheritance and found that financial inequality among populations largely depends on the "technologies" that produce a people's livelihood.