Inequality Helped Early Societies Spread

As political rhetoric surrounding "class warfare" heats up, a new study indicates that class stratification may help a society spread.

The unequal access to resources that comes with class stratification ultimately pushed societies to migrate, displacing more egalitarian cultures, according to a study from Stanford University. The study’s findings would indicate the U.S. itself has some expanding left to do; the total net worth of the bottom 60 percent of U.S. households is less than that of Forbes 400 richest Americans.

"The fact that unequal societies today vastly outnumber egalitarian societies may not be due to the replacement of the ethic of equality by a more selfish ethic, as originally thought by many researchers," said Deborah Rogers, the lead author of the study. "Instead, it appears that the stratified societies simply spread and took over, crowding out the egalitarian populations."

But even if stratification helped societies spread during the early era of civilization as the study suggests, rising income inequality could now be hindering economic growth, according to an International Monetary Fund study released earlier this month. If income inequality decreased by 10 percent, the duration of an expected period of economic growth would grow by 50 percent, according to the paper....

Read the rest at The Huffington Post, High Income Inequality Helped Early Societies Spread, Study Finds