War both reduced and increased inequality over the past ten thousand years.

ABSTRACT: Scholars are divided over the long-term effects that war has had on inequality. Some have argued that conflict grows the gap between rich and poor. Others counter that violence levels out wealth differences. The GINI Project Database is a large global sample of archaeological data on house sizes created to investigate what factors influenced economic inequality over long periods of time, including warfare. Over 39,000 individual residential units were coded as having fortifications present or absent, with about a third in fortified settlements (n = 13,372) and two-thirds in unfortified settlements (n = 25,897). We compared residential disparity (differences in residential unit sizes within a settlement) at sites around the world (n = 770) dating as far back as 10,000 y ago. We found strong

SUBMITTER: McCoy MD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12037038 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature