HomeEditors' Picks How research covering more than 5,000 years sheds light on income inequality today
How research covering more than 5,000 years sheds light on income inequality today
By
Clark Merrefield
Tuesday May 11, 2021
(Image: Adobe/yezep)
King Menes unified Egypt around 5,000 years ago, making it among the world’s first central governments.
Millennia later, Namibia, on the southwest coast of Africa, was under German then South African rule until 1990, when its independent government was formed.
Egypt’s history of statehood is old and Namibia’s is new, yet both countries have this in common: relatively high levels of income inequality today.
Central governments that are very old or new tend to have higher inequality than those in the middle — a “just right” Goldilocks zone of lower inequality for countries with governments established sometime between Egypt and Namibia.