Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
Is inequality largely the result of the Industrial Revolution? Or, were pre‐industrial incomes as unequal as they are today? This article infers inequality across individuals within each of the 28 pre‐industrial societies, for which data were available, using what are known as social tables. It applies two new concepts: the inequality possibility frontier and the inequality extraction ratio. They compare the observed income inequality to the maximum feasible inequality that, at a given level of income, might have been ‘extracted’ by those in power. The results give new insights into the connection between inequality and economic development in the very long run.
Milanović et al. (Tue,) studied this question.
Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context: