The Creation and Division of Wealth and the Long-term Consequences of Inequality

该项目召集了一个科学家工作组，研究财富不平等发展的史前和早期历史。要研究的财富不平等的关键指标是在任何一个时间点的房屋大小差异，因为在许多不同的社会中，较富裕的家庭往往住在较大的房子里。研究小组将首先收集尽可能多的地区的数据。然后，将房屋大小的差异与这些已知地区的其他社会和文化趋势的信息（例如，变化的政治组织，暴力和人口规模）进行比较，以了解这些领域的变化如何影响财富不平等（反之亦然）。研究人员还将研究当代社会中房屋大小与财富之间的关系，以更好地了解考古记录中的模式如何与当前不平等的动态联系起来。这项研究由考古综合联盟协调，由科罗拉多大学考古合作综合中心管理。该团队收集的数据集将在项目结束时通过数字考古记录提供给其他研究人员。人们普遍认为，由于社会流动性下降、总需求减少以及相关的心理影响，过于极端的财富差异可能会降低社会凝聚力。另一方面，有时也有人声称，一定程度的财富分化是刺激创新、导致总体繁荣所必需的。这项研究提供了一个机会，在很长一段时间内使用非常广泛的地理镜头来检查这些概括。根据之前的研究，房屋大小差异的程度将使用经济学家用来描述当今社会财富或收入差异的相同指数（如基尼系数）来衡量。这些措施随时间的变化可以很容易地与其他社会指标的变化联系起来，以评估过去导致高或低财富分化的情况。该项目的结果可以帮助为当今许多社会中人们认为的高度财富不平等的辩论提供信息。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project assembles a working group of scientists to study the prehistory and early history of the development of wealth inequality. The key measure of wealth inequality to be examined is differences in house sizes at any single moment in time, since wealthier households tend to live in larger houses in many different societies. The team will first assemble these data for as many regions as possible. Then, house-size differences will be compared with information on other social and cultural trends in these societies over time (for example, changing political organization, violence, and population size), in regions where these are known, to understand how changes in these domains affect wealth inequality (and vice versa). The researchers will also examine the relationship between house size and wealth in contemporary societies to better understand how patterns in the archaeological record potentially connect to the dynamics of inequality in the present. The research is coordinated by the Coalition for Archaeological Synthesis and administered by the University of Colorado’s Center for Collaborative Synthesis in Archaeology. The dataset assembled by this team will be made available to other researchers through the Digital Archaeological Record at the close of the project.It is generally believed that wealth differences that are too extreme may degrade social cohesion due to declining social mobility, reduced aggregate demand, and associated psychological impacts. On the other hand, it is also sometimes claimed that some level of wealth differentiation is necessary to stimulate innovation leading to aggregate prosperity. This research provides an opportunity to examine such generalizations over very long spans of time using a very broad geographic lens. Drawing on previous research, the degree of difference in house sizes will be measured using the same indices (such as the Gini coefficient) used by economists to characterize differences in wealth or income in societies today. Changes through time in these measures can be readily correlated with changes in other social indicators to assess the circumstances leading to high, or low, wealth differentiation in the past. The results of this project can help inform the debate on perceived high levels of wealth inequality in many societies today.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.