Age-old issue - Modern inequality

Irish Examiner Editorial

WHO to blame for social inequality? Was it the 18th-century British and their expanding empire? The late-19th-century capitalists of the US? Could it be traced back to the city states of Italy or even further to the ancient Romans and Egyptians?

No to all the above, according to a new study, which reveals that Neolithic farming sowed the seeds of modern inequality 10,000 years ago.

Research published in the science journal Nature shows that significant wealth gaps arose among our ancestors when farming first established the idea of land and animal ownership. It was solidified when landowners began to use draft animals such as oxen and horses to increase yields.

The study also shows that inequality can be reduced by circumstances or social and economic policy. Wealth inequality was high in the US in the 1920s and in Britain in Victorian times, but it was low from the 1930s to the 1960s on both sides of the Atlantic, when women took up factory jobs during the war and the rich were made to pay more taxes.