Introduction

Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010 7

Intergenerational Wealth Transmission and

Inequality in Premodern Societies

The Emergence and Persistence of Inequality

in Premodern Societies
Introduction to the Special Section

by Samuel Bowles, Eric Alden Smith, and Monique Borgerhoff Mulder

CA⫹ Online-Only Supplement: Estimating the Inheritance of Wealth in Premodern Societies

In this special section we propose an interpretation of the emergence and persistence of wealth
inequality in premodern populations along with ethnographic and quantitative evidence exploring
this hypothesis. The long-term trajectory of inequality in premodern societies, we suggest, is based
on the differing importance of three classes of wealth—material, embodied, and relational—together
with differences in the transmission of these types of wealth across generations. Subsequent essays
in this forum use data on individual and household wealth from 21 populations to evaluate this and
related propositions concerning the interaction of wealth class, transmission rates, production systems
(foraging, horticultural, pastoral, and agricultural), and inequality. Here we motivate our interpre-
tation by applying our ideas to the Holocene transition from more egalitarian to more stratified
societies, introduce key concepts that are developed in the subsequent essays, and comment on some
of the limitations of our study.

Given that sustained economic inequalities generally leave
archaeological signatures, their absence (in the form of fu-
nerary assemblages, storage facilities, dwellings, ceremonial
objects, and nutritional indicators) suggests that prior to
about 24,000 years ago (and possibly much more recently),
most humans lived in foraging bands with little economic
differentiation among families (Formicola 2007; Pettitt and
Bader 2000; Vanhaeren and d’Errico 2005). Excepting groups
occupying especially rich fishing and hunting sites, substantial
levels of economic inequality became characteristic of many
(but far from all) populations only after the domestication
Samuel Bowles is Research Professor and Director of the Behavioral
Sciences Program at the Santa Fe Institute (1399 Hyde Park Road,
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501, U.S.A. [samuel.bowles@gmail.com])
and Professor of Economics at the University of Siena. Eric Alden
Smith is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the Uni-
versity of Washington (Box 353100, Seattle, Washington 98195-
3100, U.S.A.). Monique Borgerhoff Mulder is Professor in the
Department of Anthropology and the Graduate Group in Ecology at
the University of California, Davis (Davis, California 95616, U.S.A.).
This paper was submitted 13 V 09 and accepted 8 IX 09.
of plants and animals, eventually culminating in the emer-
gence of class societies and the hierarchical ancient states. We
here offer a unified explanation both of the emergence of
highly unequal societies and of the continuum found in the
ethnographic and historical record from egalitarian foragers
to economically stratified pastoral and agricultural societies.
The key to understanding both the Holocene transition
and the inequality continuum among contemporary small-
scale societies, we propose, is the degree to which wealth is
transmitted across generations, for this will determine the
extent to which differences in wealth among families may
cumulate over time. An example illustrates what is distinctive
about our explanation. The Keatley Creek fishers of British
Columbia (Hayden 1997), a sedentary prehistoric population,
demonstrate the key role of intergenerational inheritance in
sustaining inequality. Archaeological studies reveal dietary and
other differences between the residents of distinct longhouses
that are traceable to the control by the rich over access to
choice fishing sites and the transmission of this privilege
across generations.
Our explanation of the dynamics of inequality formalizes
the contrast between Keatley Creek with its inherited fishing

䉷 2010 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2010/5101-0003$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/649206

This content downloaded from 146.232.129.75 on Wed, 12 Jun 2013 23:21:00 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 8 Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
sites and extraordinary inequalities and the more common
egalitarian social structure of foraging groups, in which (as
we will see) wealth is less readily transmitted. This contrast
when fully developed suggests a more general way of thinking
about variation in equality in the very long run and across
different types of human societies.
Limitations of the available archaeological sources have led
us to rely on contemporary or historical data. Prehistoric
wealth inequality and its transmission across generations is
evident in opulent burials of children and other mortuary
practices (Formicola 2007; Pettitt and Bader 2000; Vanhaeren
and d’Errico 2005), the nature and distribution of ceremonial
goods (Hayden 2001), the size and location of dwellings and
storage facilities (Soffer 1989), and measures of stature and
health (Cohen and Armelagos 1984). Although the archae-
ological evidence indicates the presence of prehistoric in-
equality, it does not allow precise estimates of its degree or
the extent of its intergenerational transmission that would
permit comparison across differing production systems and
historical epochs. Fortunately, current and recent data, when
analyzed with appropriate models, can assist in the recon-
struction of the past. Examples include the use of contem-
porary linguistic and genetic evidence to infer ancient patterns
of migration (Seielstad, Minch, and Cavalli-Sforza 1998; Wil-
kins 2006), economic transitions (Ammerman and Cavalli-
Sforza 1984), and social structure (Kirch 1984; Nettle 1996).
Other explanations of the Holocene emergence of inequal-
ity have attributed a central role to climate change (Boyd et
al. 2001), to food storage (Kuijt 2008; Testart 1982), to elite
control of circumscribed resources such that the costs of de-
sertion are high (Boone 1992), or to the promotion of luxury
consumption and ceremonial display (Hayden 2001). Still
other explanations stress population pressure (Cohen 1977;
Dow and Reed 2009; Kennett et al. 2008; Shennan 2008),
warfare (Rowthorn and Seabright 2008; Spencer 2002; Web-
ster 1975), or developments that permit a more complex di-
vision of labor (Henrich and Boyd 2008; Smith and Choi
2007), and others attribute a decisive role to ideological and
cultural factors such as a growing concentration of control
over ritual (Trigger 2003). Related and additional interpre-
tations have been proposed for the rise of states (Wright 1978),
and further explanations are surveyed in Ames (2007) and
Johnson and Earle (2000).
Economic and social inequality is generally measured by
the extent of enduring differences among people or families
in access to valued goods, services, or status. It is conventional
to distinguish between achieved differences that may result
from differential skill, effort, or other individual attributes,
on the one hand, and ascribed differences due to distinctions
of ethnic group membership, race, or social origins on the
other. Understood as persistent ascribed differences in access
to economic resources and other valued ends, inequality is
exemplified by the transmission of economic and social ad-
vantage within families across generations. As the basis of
hereditary elites and of caste and other persistent systems of
This content downloaded from 146.232.129.75 on Wed, 12 Jun 2013 23:21:00 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
social stratification, the intergenerational transmission of
wealth has figured prominently over the centuries in theories
of inequality and social change. Similarly, wealth transmission
is central to debates on equality of opportunity, distributive
justice, and poverty alleviation.
The intergenerational transmission of education, occupa-
tional prestige, physical capital, and other forms of human
and material wealth has been extensively studied by econo-
mists and sociologists, and its quantitative extent has been
estimated in comparative studies in a limited number of mod-
ern economies (Björklund and Jäntti 2009; Bowles and Gintis
2002; Corak 2004; Hertz et al. 2007). But for premodern
societies, individual-based empirical estimates of the extent
of intergenerational transmission are almost nonexistent, de-
spite a long history of ethnographic interest in the more for-
mal rules of inheritance (Goody 1976) and valuable com-
parative contributions based on ethnographers’ subjective
assessments (Pryor 1977, 2005).
To remedy this situation, we must address a set of chal-
lenges. The first is to identify the distinctive kinds of wealth
that are central to the livelihoods of foragers, horticulturalists,
and premodern agriculturalists and herders, which include
little-studied aspects of wealth such as the skills involved in
subsistence production, social connections such as exist in
food sharing or coalitional networks, as well as land, livestock,
and material possessions and the more commonly studied
aspects of somatic wealth (such as body weight). The second
challenge is to devise measures of the intergenerational trans-
mission of wealth that are applicable across different kinds
of wealth and across different populations, including those
with radically different social and demographic structures,
including foragers, horticulturalists, herders, and farmers. The
fact that the necessary information is not available in standard
survey data sets is another heretofore decisive impediment to
such comparative studies.
While the degree of intergenerational wealth transmission
within families and the degree of wealth inequality among
families in a given generation are entirely independent mea-
sures, the two are causally linked. As long as wealth is trans-
mitted across generations, any sources of different wealth
holdings in a given generation—bountiful harvest or hunt,
an incapacitating accident, or theft of one’s stock—will con-
tribute to the inequality in the next and subsequent genera-
tions. We have explored elsewhere (Borgerhoff Mulder et al.
2009) the interaction between chance shocks to one’s wealth
and its transmission across generations. This interaction im-
plies a wealth dynamic that may give a stationary (long-run
equilibrium) level of wealth inequality. This steady state bal-
ances, on the one hand, the tendency of wealth inequality to
dissipate over time due to regression to the mean in inter-
generational wealth transmission (meaning that the offspring
of the rich are closer to the mean than their parents were,
and similarly for the offspring of the poor) with, on the other,
the offsetting injection of new inequalities in each generation
due to shocks.
Bowles et al. The Emergence and Persistence of Inequality in Premodern Societies: Introduction
In this and the following five essays, we and our colleagues
report the results of a study of these multiple dimensions of
wealth, based on new data from 21 hunter-gatherer, horti-
cultural, pastoral, and agricultural populations. Our studies
examine both the distribution of wealth among individuals
(or households) and its transmission across generations. We
present estimates of dispersion and intergenerational trans-
mission for 43 different types of wealth, and we use these to
discuss the dynamics of inequality across different production
systems. See also the CA⫹ online supplement “Estimating the
Inheritance of Wealth in Premodern Societies” in the online
edition of Current Anthropology.
The Nature of Wealth and Its
Intergenerational Transmission
We use a broad definition of “wealth” similar to Kaplan’s
(1996) concept of embodied and extrasomatic capital and to
economists’ measure of physical and human capital (Schultz
1961), namely, an attribute of the individual that contributes
to a flow of valued goods or services. We do this because we
want to examine a wide range of causes of inequality among
individuals that may be transmitted across generations,
whether these inequalities are associated with differences in
livestock, land, tools, skills, knowledge, reproductive success,
body weight, trading partners, social networks, or other in-
dividual attributes. In this respect we converge with the work
of social scientists engaged with poverty alleviation who em-
phasize the nonincome dimensions to poverty such as lon-
gevity, literacy, and health, given that the poor generally live
shorter and less healthy lives and enjoy less education than
the rich (Kanbur 2001). It also converges with that of evo-
lutionary anthropologists, who have made the intergenera-
tional transfer of a whole range of wealth types central to
their models of human demographic patterns (Kaplan 1996;
Kaplan and Lancaster 2003; Lee 2003; Luttbeg, Borgerhoff
Mulder, and Mangel 2000; Mace 2000).
We group these disparate kinds of wealth into three generic
categories—material, relational, and embodied. Material
wealth consists of real estate, livestock, household goods, farm
equipment, and other material items that store wealth, such
as jewelry; in this study our primary measures are land, live-
stock, and household effects. Relational wealth refers pri-
marily to an individual’s position in social networks, specif-
ically, the number and status of individuals to whom he or
she is linked. Anthropologists have long recognized the im-
portance of such relationships (Mauss 1967). Here we mea-
sure relational wealth by number of partners with whom an
individual shares food, labor, or livestock; unfortunately, we
have no measures of ritual power, an important element of
relational wealth and key to institutionalizing inequality in
some populations (e.g., Keen 2006). Embodied wealth in-
cludes strength, immune function, coordination, skill, and
knowledge. Here our measures include body weight, grip
strength, practical skills, and knowledge measured by indices
This content downloaded from 146.232.129.75 on Wed, 12 Jun 2013 23:21:00 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
9
such as foraging returns or farming skills and (in predemo-
graphic transition populations) reproductive success. We rec-
ognize that reproductive success (as a measure of Darwinian
fitness) is commonly viewed as a consequence rather than a
measure of wealth (e.g., Nettle and Pollet 2008). Here, how-
ever, we use reproductive success as a summary indicator of
somatic wealth, capturing an individual’s ability to produce
and successfully raise offspring.
Material, relational, and embodied wealth take different
forms in each population. For example, material wealth
among East African pastoralists (livestock) is quite different
from that of English farmers in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries (an estate) or the household utensils and tools of a
South American horticulturalist. Similarly, the food-sharing
networks of whalers in Indonesia are very different from hxaro
exchange partners among the Botswanan Ju/’hoansi. Never-
theless it is generally straightforward to classify these and other
forms of wealth as embodied, material, or relational.
We have collected individual- or family-level data on as
many types of wealth as possible that fall into these three
classes. The resulting wealth measures for parent-offspring
pairs reveal the similarity of wealth levels across generations,
allowing us to estimate the degree of intergenerational trans-
mission of wealth. The same data (not restricted to intergen-
erational pairs) also allow an estimate of the degree of in-
equality among households and individuals with respect to
different kinds of wealth.
Transmission of material resources between generations is
a defining feature of humans. It occurs in some nonhuman
species, typically, cooperative breeders such as acorn wood-
peckers, where 24% of males inherit their parents’ territory
along with its granary of acorns (Koenig et al. 2000). But
species where the young stay in their natal area and benefit
from such bequests are unusual, and the extent of bequests
is limited compared to those that occur among humans, where
offspring generally acquire a great deal more from parents
than their genetic material. Anthropologists most commonly
refer to intergenerational transmission as “inheritance,” ex-
amining normative conventions regarding the transmission
of material resources, property rights, political office, and
more abstract aspects of status (such as caste). For example,
they attribute some aspects of cultural diversity to the extent
of durable resources that may be transmitted to the next
generation (Diehl 2000; Gaulin and Schlegel 1980; Kelly 1993;
Price 1995). And where there are such resources to transmit,
they have examined how the transmission of material re-
sources, political offices, and other kinds of status is patterned
by sex (matrilineal or patrilineal; e.g., Aberle 1961) or sex and
linearity (Burton et al. 1996; Collier 1988; Earle 1997; Jones
2003). Anthropologists have also sought to link the existence
of heritable property to different kinds of kinship systems
(Aberle 1961; Carneiro 1970; Gibson 2008; Gray and Gulliver
1964).
Humans are also unusual in the extent to which embodied
wealth in the form of knowledge and skill are transmitted,
 10
and indeed it is this extended dependence of offspring on
their parents during which offspring learn to forage for hard-
to-acquire foods that many now argue creates the selective
conditions that shaped our unique life histories (Kaplan,
Hooper, and Gurven 2009). Studies of some other animals
show considerable inheritance of dominance rank (Cowlishaw
and Dunbar 1991; Engh et al. 2000; Pusey and Packer 1997;
Silk, Altman, and Alberts 2006), and for some (e.g., female
spotted hyenas; Hofer and East 2003), the transmission pro-
cess depends critically on the presence of the parent. Humans
are thus not unique in the intergenerational transfer of non-
material resources. But the unusually long period of depen-
dence on parental support is testimony to the extent that
learning from parents and others in the previous generation
is essential to human livelihoods.
Transmission-Enhancing Mechanisms
Our measure of wealth transmission across generations is the
statistical association between offspring’s and parent’s wealth
(technical details for the model and estimation in this and
subsequent essays are in the CA⫹ online supplement and in
Borgerhoff Mulder et al. 2009). We adopt the convenient unit-
free convention of measuring this association as an elasticity,
namely, the percent difference in offspring wealth associated
with a percent difference in parental wealth, which we refer
to as b. (Francis Galton’s [1889] “regression to the mean” is
1 ⫺ b.) Though we describe a process of “transmission,” b
need not represent a literal passing on from parent to child
of such things as tracts of land or herds of stock. Its extent
is the result of these bequest-like processes and any other
mechanism that links differences in parental wealth to dif-
ferences in offspring wealth.
In addition to bequests and other direct transfers, the most
important of these mechanisms affecting b are assortment in
marital, productive, or other resource-sharing activities; the
manner in which wealth is invested, developed, consumed,
or otherwise used; and the extent to which others may be
excluded from the benefits of wealth acquired from parents.
Positive assortment contributes to intergenerational trans-
mission because when wealthy individuals share sources of
wealth (whether material, cultural, or genetic) with similarly
wealthy mates or partners in economic pursuits, regression
to the mean (1 ⫺ b) is limited. The importance of the next
mechanism derives from the fact that wealth difference that
may be due to differences in transfers or assortment may
either grow or diminish over time. In the former case, the
result is to enhance the level of association between parental
and offspring wealth. This is likely to occur when there is
cumulative advantage associated with the use of wealth, as
may arise in the case of material wealth if there are economies
of scale (e.g., in irrigated agriculture or herding). In these
cases, somewhat larger holdings in one generation may result
in significantly larger holdings in the next, partially overcom-
ing the pressures for regression to the mean arising from less
This content downloaded from 146.232.129.75 on Wed, 12 Jun 2013 23:21:00 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
than perfect assortment and the dissipation of resources
among multiple offspring or others in the bequest process.
Cumulative advantage may also arise for some kinds of po-
litically deployed network wealth, where the influence one
may exert increases more than proportionally with the num-
ber of ones’ allies.
Finally, there is the extent to which the form of wealth
acquired from one’s parents allows the offspring to exclude
others from its use. An example is knowledge (how to make
a tool or where to find honey) that is typically directly trans-
missible but cannot readily be monopolized by offspring (ex-
cept for some kinds of culturally protected ritual knowledge).
Thus, differences in the degree of transmission (b) associated
with different classes of wealth arise because material, em-
bodied, and relational weath differ in the extent to which
direct transmission is possible, whether aspects of the wealth
class favor assortment, the extent of cumulative advantage,
or the extent to which others can be excluded.
Data and analysis in the essays that follow show that the
extent of actual transmission is not determined solely by the
characteristics of the wealth type and will differ across pro-
duction systems in response to differences in the cultural
norms and political practices of a group and other influences
not directly linked to the type of wealth. But the above analysis
does suggest that material wealth, because it is directly trans-
missible, is subject to both positive assortment and cumulative
advantage, and is excludable, may be more highly transmitted
than either embodied or relational wealth. Our summary of
the relevant influences appears in table 1.
Measuring Wealth Transmission,
Importance, and Inequality
We seek to estimate b (the percent difference in offspring
wealth associated with a percent difference in parental wealth)
based on the statistical association of wealth levels for parents
and offspring at the same age or at death. For example, for
East Anglian farmers in the sixteenth to eighteenth century,
our estimate is based on estates at death of the two genera-
tions, while our b’s for the intergenerational transmission of
reproductive success are statistically age corrected to estimate
completed reproduction. To provide a more intuitive answer
to the question of how much intergenerational inequality a
given value of b indicates, we can use the estimate of b to
indicate the probability that an offspring whose parent is in
Table 1. Factors enhancing the transmission of three classes
of wealth
Material Embodied Relational
Direct transmission Yes Limited Limited
Cumulative advantage Yes No In some cases
Positive assortment Yes Yes Limited
Excludable Yes In some cases No
Bowles et al. The Emergence and Persistence of Inequality in Premodern Societies: Introduction
the top decile (or quintile) of the distribution of wealth will
also end up in the top decile (or quintile), to the probability
that the offspring of a parent in the bottom decile will end
up in the top decile (or quintile). For example, b p 0.2 im-
plies that the offspring from the top decile in distribution of
wealth in the parental generation has 3.6 times the likelihood
of being in the top decile of his or her generation as the son
or daughter of the bottom decile (for details, see the CA⫹
online supplement). Thus, what may appear to be “small”
intergenerational elasticities imply quite substantial differ-
ences in life chances. Doubling the b (to 0.4) more than
quadruples the ratio of the above conditional probabilities
(to 16.2).
In order to estimate the overall degree of wealth inheritance
characteristic of a particular population, we need to average
the various kinds of wealth essential to their livelihoods. Be-
cause the importance of each wealth type will of course differ
across production systems, we use a weighted average, the
weights (termed a) measuring the relative importance of a
given wealth class for the particular population in question.
To determine the importance of a wealth category within a
particular production system, we used ethnographers’ judg-
ments (for each wealth class in the population they studied)
of the percentage difference in household well-being associ-
ated with a 1% difference in amount of a given wealth class,
holding other wealth classes constant at the average for that
population and requiring these percentage effects to sum to
1. We then used these weights to calculate an “importance-
weighted” or “a-weighted” average b for the population (de-
tails and alternative direct estimates are in the CA⫹ online
supplement).
To determine inequalities in our measures of wealth, we
calculated a Lorenz curve-based Gini coefficient on age-
adjusted data; a Gini coefficient approaches 1 if in a large
population a single person owns all the wealth, whereas a Gini
of 0 implies complete equality. (For example, Gini coefficients
for grave wealth for some of the Northwest Plateau fishers
are in the neighborhood of 0.7, indicating an extraordinary
level of economic inequality [Schulting 1995] possibly on a
par with modern Brazil or South Africa.)
The Sample of Societies
Table 2 describes the populations studied. As can be seen,
these are distributed across all continents, but unevenly (e.g.,
Africa is overrepresented, the Americas the opposite). Due to
the nature of the individual-level data required to estimate b,
we utilized primarily ethnographic rather than archaeological
data sets; we include three premodern European populations
studied through archival material. The paucity of samples,
compared, for example, to the Standard Cross-Cultural Sam-
ple (n p 186), reflects the fact that despite growth in quan-
titative ethnographic research, there are still few data sets that
allow for the reliable estimation of intergenerationally trans-
mitted wealth. This is hardly surprising, given the fact that
This content downloaded from 146.232.129.75 on Wed, 12 Jun 2013 23:21:00 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
11
the fieldwork on which most studies are based is typically
short-lived—the length of a PhD, with perhaps a few return
visits to a site. Tracing families and households over time is
challenging, requiring painstakingly cautious ethnography
and sophisticated use of databases. Our strategy is to focus
on studies that provide rigorously collected social, economic,
and demographic data so as to generate reliable estimates of
the distribution and transmission of different wealth types.
This yields a sample of 21 populations, one of the largest
comparative anthropological studies of small-scale societies
based on individual-level data.
Production Systems
As in the case of our three wealth classes, the boundaries
demarcating the four production systems that we study—
hunter-gatherer, horticultural, pastoral, and agricultural—are
a matter of judgment. We employ these conventional cate-
gories because past research (reviewed in Johnson and Earle
2000) has suggested that these are strongly associated with
different levels of equality and inequality, and we wish to
explore what role intergenerational transmission and the im-
portance of different categories of wealth might play in this.
We refer to this definitional framework as production systems
rather than subsistence systems, even though the latter term
is used more conventionally in anthropological and archae-
ological work, because although each of our societies does
produce food for subsistence, they all are (and probably have
been for a long time) integrated into local, even regional,
markets.
Accordingly, we define hunter-gatherer production systems
as those that make no (or minimal) use of domesticated spe-
cies (either plant or animal), whereas pastoralists rely pri-
marily on the livestock that they raise for subsistence and
sometimes commercial purposes. Pastoralists may farm, but
the extent of land that is cultivated is constrained not by
ownership rights but, rather, by labor availability. Horticul-
turalists are variously distinguished from agriculturalists in
the use of plows and traction animals by the latter, in whether
the system is labor or land limited, in commercial orientation,
or in the alienability of land. A strict technologically based
definition of production systems would focus on the use of
plows and traction animals versus hoes. In practice, the sys-
tems analyzed here differ in terms of technology as well as
in terms of the productivity, scarcity, and alienability of land.
Accordingly, horticulturalists cultivate land that is plentifully
available with hoes, and agriculturalists cultivate family-
owned farms with animal-drawn plows. As subsidiary activ-
ities, horticulturalists often fish, hunt and gather, and keep
livestock, whereas agriculturalists most commonly supple-
ment their production of crops with livestock rearing. We
recognize that distinctions between these production systems
are necessarily somewhat arbitrary, and we stress that pro-
duction systems are in no sense viewed as evolutionarily se-
quenced stages. They are, however, very useful for defining
 Table 2. Sample background

Production system Researcher Type of inheritance for property

and population Location and date Categories of wealth studied (key publication) General description and positions

Hunter-gatherer:
Ache Paraguay (1982–2008) Weight; hunting returns Hill (Hill and Hurtado 1996) Mobile foragers No formal inheritance of property beyond
gifting; foraging territories show weak
patrilineal bias; godparental relationships
influence status acquisition
Hadza Tanzania (1982–2008) Weight; grip strength; hunting Marlowe (Marlowe 2010) Mobile foragers No formal rules; various kinfolk take mis-

12
skill; digging skill cellaneous items of material property
Ju/’hoansi Botswana (1973–1975) Exchange partners Wiessner (Wiessner 1982) Mobile foragers Exchange partners and land rights inher-
ited from both mother and father
Lamalera Indonesia (2006) Quality of housing; boat shares; Nolin (Alvard and Nolin 2002) Sedentary fishers, trade with Patrilineal inheritance of most property;
food share partners; repro- farmers important positions nominally inherited
ductive success by sons but in practice may be achieved
by others
Meriam Australia (1998) Reproductive success Smith (Smith, Bliege Bird, and Sedentary fishers with farming Patrilineal inheritance of land at individual

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Bird 2003) and patriclan level, with some inheri-
tance by daughters; positions generally
achieved rather than ascribed
Horticultural:
Dominicans Dominica (2000–2008) Land Quinlan (Quinlan 2006) Farmers Patrilineal inheritance of usufruct of family
land; buildings and trees transferred with

This content downloaded from 146.232.129.75 on Wed, 12 Jun 2013 23:21:00 PM

Gambians Gambia (1950–1980) Weight; reproductive success
Pimbwe Tanzania (1995–2008) House/farm utensils; farming
skill; weight; reproductive
success
Tsimane Bolivia (2002–2008) Household utensils; labor coop-
eration; allies in conflict;
knowledge/skill; grip strength;
weight; hunting returns; re-
productive success
Sear (Sear et al. 2002)
Borgerhoff Mulder (Borgerhoff
Mulder 2009)
Gurven (Gurven, Kaplan, and
Zelada Supa 2007
weak kin bias
Farmers Primarily patrilineal, with some mother-
daughter inheritance of land
Farmers with some fishing No formal rules, but possessions usually
inherited by same-sex children; matrilin-
eally inherited ritual chiefly positions
Farmers with fishing and No formal rules, but possessions usually
foraging inherited by same-sex children; status
positions are mostly achieved
 Pastoralist:
Datoga Tanzania (1987–1989) Livestock; reproductive success Borgerhoff Mulder (Borgerhoff Transhumant pastoralists, with Patrilineal inheritance of livestock, slight
Mulder 1992) some farming advantages to first and last sons
Juhaina Arabs Chad (2003) Camels Fazzio (Fazzio 2008) Transhumant pastoralists Patrilineal inheritance of livestock equally
among sons
Sangu (Ukwaheri) Tanzania (1997–2000) Cattle McElreath (McElreath 2004) Pastoralists with some farming Patrilineal inheritance of livestock equally
among sons
Yomut (Charwa) Turkmenistan/Iran Patrimony (livestock) Irons (Irons 1975) Transhumant pastoralists, with Patrilineal inheritance of livestock equally
(1965–1974) some farming among sons
Agricultural:
Bengali India (2000–2001) Reproductive success Leonetti (Leonetti et al. 2005) Farmers with wage labor Patrilineal inheritance of land
Bengaluru India (1910–2002) In-law networks Shenk (Shenk 2005) Farmers, merchants, wage labor, Patrilineal inheritance of property equally
urban among sons; daughters given dowries at
marriage
East Anglians England (1540–1845) Estate value (land); reproductive Clark (Clark 2007) Farmers, with wage labor and Sons inherit at least two-thirds of father’s
success merchants property, with slight bias toward
primogeniture
Khasi India (2000–2001) Reproductive success Leonetti (Leonetti et al. 2005) Farmers with wage labor Daughters inherit land from mother; youn-
gest daughter inherits mother’s house
Kipsigis Kenya (1981–1990) Land; livestock; cattle partners; Borgerhoff Mulder (Borgerhoff Farmers with livestock Patrilineal for land and livestock equally
reproductive success Mulder 1995) among sons
Krummhörn Germany (18th–19th Land Beise (Voland 1990) Farmers Ultimogeniture; noninheriting siblings are
centuries) compensated, daughter’s share half of a

13
son’s
Skellefteå Sweden (1800–1888) Reproductive success Low (Low and Clarke 1990) Farmers Prior to mandate for equality in 1840s,
land inheritance primarily to sons
Yomut (Chomur) Turkmenistan/Iran Patrimony (land) Irons (Irons 1975) Farmers with livestock Patrilineal inheritance of land equally
(1965–1974) among sons

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

This content downloaded from 146.232.129.75 on Wed, 12 Jun 2013 23:21:00 PM
 14
the broad contours of how the intergenerational transmission
of their principle wealth types might be correlated with levels
of inequality.
Discussion
The distinctive feature of our approach is its use of individual-
or family-level continuous measures of a heterogeneous set
of wealth types to assess the extent to which differences among
families in such valued ends as access to resources and social
ties are perpetuated over time. The fact that our measure of
transmission is unit-free facilitates quantitative comparisons
across wealth types and production systems. The approach
may be contrasted with heretofore available comparative stud-
ies that have relied not on individual-level data but on an
ethnographers’ qualitative assessment of the extent of inter-
generational inheritance or the degree of wealth inequality in
the population as a whole, often converted to an ordinal five-
point scale. The qualitative and ordinal nature of these data
effectively preclude systematic comparisons across wealth
types and production systems. As we will see in the essays
that follow, our conclusions do not entirely support the im-
pressions gained from the ethnographic literature.
Using individual data on continuous measures of wealth
comes with a price, however. The underlying model is about
the dynamics of inequality based on a continuum of wealth
in which some have more and others less. It does not represent
a class-divided population in which the control over material
wealth—land or cattle, for example—differentiates an owning
class from those without material wealth—the landless, for
example, whose only wealth is embodied and relational and
whose livelihood depends on access to material wealth under
the control of others. Yet such class distinctions are present,
even in some hunting and gathering systems (Ames 2008;
Arnold 1993; Hayden 2001; Kennett et al. 2008).
Related to this shortcoming is the fact that we do not
consider group inequality such as may exist not only among
classes but also between men and women, the young and the
old, among castes, and in societies with a history of subor-
dination of subpopulations. Partly for this reason we also
cannot study class-based and other forms of collective action
and their effects on intergenerational transmission and in-
equality of wealth. While in the societies under investigation
these do not take the familiar forms of strikes, lockouts, and
the other commonplace conflicts of industrial economies, col-
lective action in conflicts over wealth nonetheless affects the
distribution of wealth and its intergenerational transmission
in premodern populations. Examples are the coordinated
shunning, threats of ostracism, and other constraints delib-
erately imposed on would-be aggrandizers in many hunter-
gatherer populations (Boehm 2000). Lavish funeral feasting
expected to be provided by wealthy families of the deceased
is another collective practice that effectively limits direct trans-
mission of material wealth to offspring (Hayden 2009; Parker
Pearson 1999).
This content downloaded from 146.232.129.75 on Wed, 12 Jun 2013 23:21:00 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
Due to the limited nature of the available data, our sample
of populations is not (in technical terms) representative and
for that reason may be biased. Furthermore, within popula-
tions, the data sets available for examining parent-offspring
associations sometimes lack adequate information about in-
dividuals (offspring who have migrated, e.g.). We considered
several data sets that, in the end, could not be analyzed with
the set of methods we required for comparability.
The next four essays address the intergenerational trans-
mission of wealth and wealth inequality in, respectively,
hunter-gatherer, horticultural, pastoral, and agricultural pop-
ulations, each essay beginning with an introduction to general
features of the production system. Each then examines the
study populations and field sites and the extent to which these
are representative of the production system, as well as meth-
ods used for collecting wealth data in each population. Each
essay presents the estimates of the relative importance of ma-
terial, embodied, and relational wealth for success or well-
being in that particular production system (a), and then the
estimates of the extent of intergenerational transmission (b)
and possible transmission mechanisms for each wealth type.
A brief concluding essay synthesizes the empirical results,
evaluating the linkages between production systems, inter-
generational transmission of the most important kinds of
wealth, and the levels of inequality.
We hope this effort will encourage others to expand the
range of premodern societies for which rigorous analysis of
intergenerational wealth transmission is possible and to de-
velop quantitative models more able to capture the full com-
plexity of the process of intergenerational transmission of
wealth and the dynamics of inequality.
Acknowledgments
We and the authors of the following essays would like to
thank the participating members of the populations we stud-
ied for their cooperation and the Behavioral Science Program
of the Santa Fe Institute, the Russell Sage Foundation, and
the U.S. National Science Foundation for support of this
project.
References Cited
Aberle, David F. 1961. Matrilineal descent in cross-cultural
comparison. In Matrilineal kinship. D. Schneider and K.
Gough, eds. Pp. 655–730. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Alvard, Michael S., and David A. Nolin. 2002. Rousseau’s
whale hunt? coordination among big-game hunters. Cur-
rent Anthropology 43(4):533–559.
Ames, Kenneth. 2007. The archaeology of rank. In Handbook
of archaeological theories. R. A. Bradley, D. G. Maschner,
and C. Chippendale, eds. Pp. 487–513. Lanham, MD:
AltaMira.
———. 2008. Slavery, household production and demogra-
Bowles et al. The Emergence and Persistence of Inequality in Premodern Societies: Introduction
phy on the southern Northwest Coast. In Invisible citizens:
captives and their consequences. C. Cameron, ed. Pp.
138–158. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
Ammerman, Albert J., and Luigi L. Cavalli-Sforza. 1984. The
Neolithic transition and the genetics of populations in Europe.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Arnold, Jeanne E. 1993. Labor and the rise of complex hunter-
gatherers. Journal of Archaeological Science 12:75–119.
Björklund, Anders, and Markus Jäntti. 2009. Intergenerational
income mobility and the role of family background. In
Oxford handbook of economic inequality. Wiemer Salverda,
Brian Nolan, and Timothy M. Smeeding, eds. Pp. 491–521.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Boehm, Christopher. 2000. Hierarchy in the forest. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Boone, James L. 1992. Competition, conflict, and the devel-
opment of social hierarchies. In Evolutionary ecology and
human behavior. Eric Alden Smith and Bruce Winterhalder,
eds. Pp. 301–337. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
Borgerhoff Mulder, Monique. 1992. Demography of pasto-
ralists: preliminary data on the Datoga of Tanzania. Human
Ecology 20(4):383–405.
———. 1995. Bridewealth and its correlates: quantifying
changes over time. Current Anthropology 36(4):573–603.
———. 2009. Serial monogamy as polygyny or polyandry?
marriage in the Tanzanian Pimbwe. Human Nature 20(2):
130–150.
Borgerhoff Mulder, Monique, Samuel Bowles, Tom Hertz,
Adrian Bell, Jan Beise, Greg Clark, Ila Fazzio, et al. 2009.
Intergenerational transmission of wealth and the dynamics
of inequality in small-scale societies. Science 326(5953):
682–688.
Bowles, Samuel, and Herbert Gintis. 2002. The inheritance
of inequality. Journal of Economic Perspectives 16:3–30.
Boyd, Robert, Herbert Gintis, Samuel Bowles, and Peter J.
Richerson. 2003. The evolution of altruistic punishment.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA
100:3531–3535.
Burton, Michael L., Carmella C. Moore, John W. M. Whiting,
and A. Kimball Romney. 1996. Regions based on social
structure. Current Anthropology 37(1):87–123.
Carneiro, Robert L. 1970. A theory of the origin of the state.
Science 169:733–738.
Clark, Gregory. 2007. A farewell to alms: a brief economic
history of the world. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
Cohen, Mark Nathan. 1977. The food crisis in prehistory. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Cohen, Mark Nathan, and George J. Armelagos, eds. 1984.
Paleopathology at the origins of agriculture. Orlando, FL:
Academic Press.
Collier, J. F. 1988. Marriage and inequality in classless societies.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Corak, Miles. 2004. Generational income mobility in North
This content downloaded from 146.232.129.75 on Wed, 12 Jun 2013 23:21:00 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
15
America and Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Cowlishaw, Guy, and Robin I. M. Dunbar. 1991. Dominance
rank and mating success in male primates. Animal Behav-
iour 41:1045–1056.
Diehl, Michael W., ed. 2000. Hierarchies in action: cui bono?
Occasional Paper Series. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois
University Center for Archaeological Investigations.
Dow, Gregory K., and Clyde G. Reed. 2009. The origins of
inequality: insiders, outsiders, elites, and commoners. Paper
presented at the 2nd Conference on Early Economic De-
velopments, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Co-
lumbia, July 2009. Available at http://www.sfu.ca/˜gdow/
research.html.
Earle, Timothy. 1997. How chiefs come to power. Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press.
Engh, Anne L., Katrina Esch, Laura Smale, and Kay E.
Holekamp. 2000. Mechanisms of maternal rank “inheri-
tance” in the spotted hyaena, Crocuta crocuta. Animal Be-
haviour 60:323–332.
Fazzio, Ila. 2008. Parental investment among Arab and Da-
zagada herding societies of west Chad. Berlin: Dr Müller.
Formicola, Vincenzo. 2007. From the Sunghir children to the
Romito dwarf: aspects of the Upper Paleolithic funerary
landscape. Current Anthropology 48(3):446–453.
Galton, Francis. 1889. Natural inheritance. London: Macmil-
lan.
Gaulin, Steven J. C., and Alice Schlegel. 1980. Paternal con-
fidence and paternal investment: a cross-cultural test of a
sociobiological hypothesis. Ethology and Sociobiology 1:
301–309.
Gibson, D. Blair. 2008. Chiefdoms and the emergence of pri-
vate property in land. Journal of Anthropological Archae-
ology 27:46–62.
Goody, Jack. 1976. Production and reproduction. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Gray, R. F., and P. H. Gulliver, eds. 1964. The family estate in
Africa. Boston: Boston University Press.
Gurven, Michael, Hillard Kaplan, and Alfredo Zelada Supa.
2007. Mortality experience of Tsimane Amerindians of Bo-
livia: regional variation and temporal trends. American
Journal of Human Biology 19:376–398.
Hayden, Brian. 1997. The pithouses of Keatley Creek. New
York: Harcourt Brace College.
———. 2001. Richman, poorman, beggarman, chief: the dy-
namics of social inequality. In Archaelogy at the millennium.
Gary Feinman and T. Douglas Price, eds. Pp. 231–272. New
York: Kluwer/Plenum.
———. 2009. Funerals as feasts: why are they so important?
Cambridge Archaeological Journal 19:29–52.
Henrich, Joseph, and Robert Boyd. 2008. Division of labor,
economic specialization, and the evolution of social strat-
ification. Current Anthropology 49(4):715–724.
Hertz, Thomas, Tamara Jayasundera, Patrizio Piraino, Sibel
Selcuk, Nicole Smith, and Alina Veraschchagina. 2007. The
 16
inheritance of educational inequality: international com-
parisons and fifty-year trends. B. E. Journal of Economic
Analysis and Policy 7:article 10.
Hill, Kim, and A. Magdalena Hurtado. 1996. Ache life history:
the ecology and demography of a foraging people. New York:
Aldine de Gruyter.
Hofer, Heribert, and Marion L. East. 2003. Behavioral pro-
cesses and costs of co-existence in female spotted hyenas:
a life history perspective. Evolutionary Ecology 17:315–331.
Irons, William. 1975. The Yomut Turkmen: a study of social
organization among a Central Asian Turkic-speaking popu-
lation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Museum of
Anthropology.
Johnson, Allen W., and Timothy Earle. 2000. The evolution
of human societies: from foraging group to agrarian state.
2nd edition. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Jones, Doug C. 2003. Kinship and deep history: exploring
connections between culture areas, genes, and languages.
American Anthropologist 105:501–514.
Kanbur, Ravi. 2001. Economic policy, distribution, and pov-
erty: the nature of disagreements. World Development 29:
1083–1094.
Kaplan, Hillard. 1996. A theory of fertility and parental in-
vestment in traditional and modern societies. Yearbook of
Physical Anthropology 39:91–135.
Kaplan, Hillard, Paul Hooper, and Michael Gurven. 2009. The
evolutionary and ecological roots of human social behavior.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B:
Biological Sciences 364(1533):3289–3299.
Kaplan, Hillard S., and Jane B. Lancaster. 2003. An evolu-
tionary and ecological analysis of human fertility, mating
patterns, and parental investment. In Offspring: human fer-
tility behavior in biodemographic perspective. Kenneth W.
Wachter and Rudolpho A. Bulatao, eds. Pp. 170–223. Wash-
ington, DC: National Academies.
Keen, Ian. 2006. Constraints on the development of enduring
inequalities in Late Holocene Australia. Current Anthro-
pology 47(1):7–38.
Kelly, Raymond C. 1993. Constructing inequality: the fabri-
cation of a hierarchy of virtue among the Etoro. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press.
Kennett, Douglas J., Bruce Winterhalder, Jacob Bartruff, and
Jon Erlandson. 2008. An ecological model for the emer-
gence of institutionalized social hierarchies in California’s
North Channel Islands. In Evolutionary analysis of cultural
behavior. Stephen Shennan, ed. Berkeley: University of Cal-
ifornia Press.
Kirch, Patrick V. 1984. The evolution of the Polynesian chief-
doms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Koenig, Walter D., Philip N. Hooge, Mark T. Stanback, and
Joseph Haydock. 2000. Natal dispersal in the cooperatively
breeding acorn woodpecker. Condor 102(3):492–502.
Kuijt, Ian. 2008. Demography and storage systems during the
southern Levantine Neolithic demographic transition. In
The Neolithic demographic transition and its consequences.
This content downloaded from 146.232.129.75 on Wed, 12 Jun 2013 23:21:00 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
Jean-Pierre Bocquet-Appel and Ofer Bar-Yosef, eds. Pp.
287–313. New York: Springer.
Lee, Ronald D. 2003. Rethinking the evolutionary theory of
aging: transfers, not births, shape senescence in social spe-
cies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the
USA 100(16):9637–9642.
Leonetti, Donna L., Dilip C. Nath, Natabar S. Heman, and
Dawn B. Neill. 2005. Kinship organization and grand-
mother’s impact on reproductive success among the ma-
trilineal Khasi and patrilineal Bengali of N.E. India. In
Grandmotherhood: the evolutionary significance of the second
half of female life. Eckart Voland, Athanasios Chasiotis, and
Wulf Schiefenhövel, eds. Pp. 194–214. New Brunswick, NJ:
Rutgers University Press.
Low, Bobbi S., and Alice L. Clarke. 1990. Family patterns in
nineteenth century Sweden: impact of occupational status
and landownership. Journal of Family History 16:117–138.
Luttbeg, Barney, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, and Marc
Mangel. 2000. To marry again or not? a dynamic model
for demographic transition. In Adaptation and human be-
havior: an anthropological perspective. Lee Cronk, Napoleon
Chagnon, and William Irons, eds. Pp. 345–368. New York:
Aldine de Gruyter.
Mace, Ruth. 2000. An adaptive model of human reproductive
rate where wealth is inherited: why people have small fam-
ilies. In Adaptation and human behavior: an anthropological
perspective. Lee Cronk, Napoleon Chagnon, and William
Irons, eds. Pp. 261–282. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
Marlowe, Frank W. 2010. The Hadza. Berkeley: University of
California Press. Forthcoming.
Mauss, Marcel. 1967. The gift: forms and functions of exchange
in archaic societies. New York: Norton.
McElreath, Richard. 2004. Social learning and the mainte-
nance of cultural variation: an evolutionary model and data
from East Africa. American Anthropologist 106:308–321.
Nettle, Daniel. 1996. Language diversity in West Africa: an
ecological approach. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology
15:403–438.
Nettle, Daniel, and Thomas V. Pollet. 2008. Natural selection
on male wealth in humans. American Naturalist 172(5):
658–666.
Parker Pearson, M. 1999. The archaeology of death and burial.
Stroud: Sutton.
Pettitt, P. B., and N. O. Bader. 2000. Direct AMS radiocarbon
dates for the Sungir mid Upper Palaeolithic burials. An-
tiquity 74(284):269–270.
Price, T. Douglas. 1995. Social inequality at the origins of
agriculture. In Foundations of social inequality. T. Douglas
Price and Gary M. Feinman, eds. Pp. 129–151. New York:
Plenum.
Pryor, Frederic L. 1977. The origins of the economy: a com-
parative study of distribution in primitive and peasant econ-
omies. New York: Academic Press.
———. 2005. Economic systems of foraging, agricultural, and
industrial societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bowles et al. The Emergence and Persistence of Inequality in Premodern Societies: Introduction
Pusey, Anne E., and Craig Packer. 1997. The ecology of re-
lationships. In Behavioral ecology: an evolutionary approach.
4th ed. John R. Krebs and Nicholas B. Davies, eds. Pp.
254–283. Oxford: Blackwell Science.
Quinlan, Robert J. 2006. Gender and risk in a matrifocal
Caribbean community: a view from behavioral ecology.
American Anthropologist 108:469–479.
Rowthorn, Robert, and Paul Seabright. 2008. Warfare and the
multiple adoption of agriculture after the last Ice Age. Work-
ing paper. Faculty of Economics, University of Toulouse.
Schulting, R. 1995. Mortuary variability and status differen-
tiation on the Columbia-Fraser plateau. Burnaby, British
Columbia: Archaeology Press, Simon Fraser University.
Schultz, T. W. 1961. Investment in human capital. American
Economic Review 51:1–17.
Sear, Rebecca, Fiona Steele, Ian A. McGregor, and Ruth Mace.
2002. The effects of kin on child mortality in rural Gambia.
Demography 39(1):43–63.
Seielstad, Mark T., Eric Minch, and Luigi L. Cavalli-Sforza.
1998. Genetic evidence for a higher female migration rate
in humans. Nature Genetics 20:278–280.
Shenk, Mary K. 2005. Kin investment in wage-labor econo-
mies: effects on child and marriage outcomes. Human Na-
ture 16:81–114.
Shennan, Stephen. 2008. Population processes and their
consequences in early Neolithic Europe. In The Neolithic
demographic transition and its consequences. Jean-Pierre
Bocquet-Appel and Ofer Bar-Yosef, eds. Pp. 315–329. Dor-
drecht: Springer Science.
Silk, Joan B., Jeanne Altman, and Susan Alberts. 2006. Social
relationships among adult female baboons (Papio cyno-
cephalus). I, II. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 61:
183–204.
Smith, Eric Alden, Rebecca Bliege Bird, and Douglas W. Bird.
2003. The benefits of costly signaling: Meriam turtle hunt-
ers. Behavioral Ecology 14(1):116–126.
This content downloaded from 146.232.129.75 on Wed, 12 Jun 2013 23:21:00 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
17
Smith, Eric Alden, and Jung-Kyoo Choi. 2007. The emergence
of inequality in small-scale societies: simple scenarios and
agent based simulations. In The model-based archaeology of
socionatural systems. Timothy A. Kohler and Sander E. van
der Leeuw, eds. Santa Fe, NM: SAR.
Soffer, Olga. 1989. Storage, sedentism and the Eurasian Pa-
laeolithic record. Antiquity 63:719–732.
Spencer, Herbert. 2002. Principles of sociology. New York:
Transaction.
Testart, Alain. 1982. The significance of food storage among
hunter-gatherers: residence patterns, population densities,
and social inequalities. Current Anthropology 23(5):
523–537.
Trigger, B. 2003. Understanding early civilizations. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Vanhaeren, Marian, and Francesco d’Errico. 2005. Grave
goods from the Saint-Germain-la-Rivière burial: evidence
for social inequality in the Upper Palaeolithic. Journal of
Anthropological Archaeology 24:117–134.
Voland, Eckart. 1990. Differential reproductive success within
the Krummhörn population (Germany, 18th and 19th cen-
turies). Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 26:65–72.
Webster, David. 1975. Warfare and the evolution of the state.
American Antiquity 40:464–470.
Wiessner, Polly. 1982. Risk, reciprocity and social influences
on !Kung San economics. In Politics and history in band
societies. Eleanor Leacock and Richard Lee, eds. Pp. 61–84.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wilkins, Jon. 2006. Unraveling male and female histories from
human genetic data. Current Opinion in Genetics and De-
velopment 16:611–617.
Wright, Henry T. 1978. Toward an explanation of the origin
of the state. In Origins of the state: the anthropology of
political evolution. R. Cohen and E. R. Service, eds. Pp.
49–68. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human
Issues.
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010 19

Intergenerational Wealth Transmission and

Inequality in Premodern Societies

Wealth Transmission and Inequality

among Hunter-Gatherers
by Eric Alden Smith, Kim Hill, Frank W. Marlowe, David Nolin, Polly
Wiessner, Michael Gurven, Samuel Bowles, Monique
Borgerhoff Mulder, Tom Hertz, and Adrian Bell
CA⫹ Online-Only Supplement: Estimating the Inheritance of Wealth in Premodern Societies

We report quantitative estimates of intergenerational transmission and population-wide inequality

for wealth measures in a set of hunter-gatherer populations. Wealth is defined broadly as factors
that contribute to individual or household well-being, ranging from embodied forms, such as weight
and hunting success, to material forms, such as household goods, as well as relational wealth in
exchange partners. Intergenerational wealth transmission is low to moderate in these populations
but is still expected to have measurable influence on an individual’s life chances. Wealth inequality
(measured with Gini coefficients) is moderate for most wealth types, matching what qualitative
ethnographic research has generally indicated (if not the stereotype of hunter-gatherers as extreme
egalitarians). We discuss some plausible mechanisms for these patterns and suggest ways in which
future research could resolve questions about the role of wealth in hunter-gatherer social and eco-
nomic life.

In this article we characterize the main features and dimen-
sions of variation in wealth transmission in hunter-gatherer
societies. We begin by defining the socioeconomic category
“hunter-gatherer” as a production system. We then discuss
wealth characteristics, wealth inheritance, and socioeconomic
Eric Alden Smith is Professor in the Department of Anthropology
at the University of Washington (Box 353100, Seattle, Washington
98195-3100, U.S.A. [easmith@u.washington.edu]). Kim Hill is Pro-
fessor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change of the
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University
(SHESC 233, P.O. Box 872402, Tempe, Arizona 85287-2402,
U.S.A.). Frank W. Marlowe is Professor in the Department of An-
thropology at Florida State University (1847 West Tennessee Street,
Tallahassee, Florida 32306, U.S.A.). David Nolin is a postdoctoral
scholar at the Carolina Population Center at the University of North
Carolina (CB 8120, University Square, 123 West Franklin Street,
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27516-2524, U.S.A.). Polly Wiessner
is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of
Utah (270 South 1400 E, Room 102, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112,
U.S.A.). Michael Gurven is Associate Professor of Anthropology
in the Integrative Anthropological Sciences Program of the Univer-
sity of California, Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara, California 93106,
inequality among ethnographically known hunter-gatherers.
The next section provides ethnographic background and an
outline of data collection methods for five sample populations
(Ache, Hadza, Ju/’hoansi, Lamalerans, and Meriam). Here we
also present quantitative results regarding various wealth cat-
egories and their importance, as well as intergenerational
wealth transmission, for each of these societies (as well as one
measure for the Tsimane, a horticultural-forager population
discussed in more detail by Gurven et al. 2010, in this issue).
U.S.A.). Samuel Bowles is Research Professor and Director of the
Behavioral Sciences Program at the Santa Fe Institute (1399 Hyde
Park Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 87501, U.S.A.) and Professor of
Economics at the University of Siena. Monique Borgerhoff Mulder
is Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Graduate
Group in Ecology at the University of California, Davis (Davis,
California 95616, U.S.A.). Tom Hertz is Visiting Professor of Eco-
nomics at the International University College of Turin (Piazza Carlo
Felice 18, 10121, Torino, Italy). Adrian Bell is a doctoral student
in the Department of Anthropology and Graduate Group in Ecology
at the University of California, Davis (Davis, California 95616,
U.S.A.). This paper was submitted 1 V 09 and accepted 7 IX 09.

䉷 2010 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2010/5101-0004$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/648530

This content downloaded from 142.104.240.194 on Sat, 13 Apr 2013 07:05:28 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 20 Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010

The concluding section summarizes our findings on the mag-
nitude and patterning of intergenerational wealth transmis-
sion in the sample populations and discusses their relation
to the broader set of hunter-gatherer societies.
Hunter-Gatherer Production Systems
We define hunter-gatherer (forager) production systems as
those that subsist primarily on undomesticated species of
plants and animals, even if some domesticated species or their
products are obtained through trade or ancillary cultivation.
Degree of reliance on domesticates ranges along a continuum,
with few if any extant societies at zero. Ethnographies and
cross-cultural databases, however, do describe a large sample
of societies with total or near-total dependence on foraging
(table 1).
Ethnographically described hunter-gatherers constitute a
numerically small but theoretically crucial set of societies. If
our species is some 200,000 years old, then the strictly hunt-
ing-gathering phase occupied well over 90% of its history;
societies relying primarily or even exclusively on foraging per-
sisted in various parts of the globe well into the twentieth
century. Both ethnographic and archaeological records testify
to considerable diversity in these societies, and contemporary
foragers are by no means survivals of some unchanged Pa-
leolithic lifeway (Kelly 1995). This diversity encompasses eco-
logical, demographic, economic, sociopolitical, and ideolog-
ical variation, to the point that some have questioned how
meaningful the “hunter-gatherer” label can be (as reviewed
in Kelly 1995). We find the category too useful to abandon
but recognize the need for distinctions within it.
Focusing on ethnographically described hunter-gatherers,
we can differentiate smaller, more mobile societies—whose
members reside in camps or villages of a few dozen people
or less, engage in considerable residential mobility, and lack
formal hereditary political officials—from larger, more sed-
entary groups with year-round or seasonal villages and he-
reditary social and political ranking. This distinction is less
typological (as the defining variables are continuous rather
than categorical) and more easily related to wealth transmis-
sion than are distinctions such as immediate return/delayed
return (Woodburn 1982) or forager/collector (Binford 1980).
Residential mobility in a large sample of hunter-gatherers
ranges from 0 to 58 moves per year, with a mean of 7.4 and
a median of 5.5 (table 1). In the smaller but more geograph-
ically representative sample of foraging societies in the Stan-
dard Cross-Cultural Sample (Murdock and White 1980),
more than two-thirds are classed as “nomadic” or “semi-
nomadic” and less than a tenth as “sedentary” (table 2). We
have removed equestrian societies and a few primarily hor-
ticultural cases from the data sets summarized in table 1.
While recognizing that most cross-cultural databases suffer
to various degrees from problems of reliability, representa-
tiveness, and sampling bias, our hope is that the patterns they
reveal are meaningful if not terribly precise.
Although the diversity encompassed in the foraging pro-
duction system is great, it has its limits. Constraints on the
degree to which resource productivity can be intensified, plus

Table 1. Summary characteristics of ethnographically described hunter-gatherer societies (from

Marlowe 2005 unless otherwise indicated)

Variable Average Median Range Casesa

Population density (per km2) .30 .12 !.01–11.0 312

Total fertility rate (live births/woman) 5.4 5.5 .8–8.5 47
Residential group size 41.4 27 13–250 263
Residential group mobility (moves/year) 7.4 5.5 0–58 312
Dietary reliance on wild resources (%) 99.4 100 80–100 367
Gathering 36.3 40 0–90 367
Hunting 30.8 30 0–89 367
Fishing 32.3 25 0–95 367
Males married polygynously (%) 14.1 10 0–70 212
Females married polygynously (%) 21.4 10 0–90 51
Postmarital residenceb 193
Patrilocal/virilocal (%) 51.3 99
Matrilocal/uxorilocal (%) 14.5 28
Other (%) 34.2 66
Descent (%)c 36
Bilateral 63.9 23
Patrilineal 13.9 5
Matrilineal 11.1 4
Ambilineal or double descent 11.1 4
a
Number of societies or populations in the sample for a given variable; equestrian cases excluded.
b
Residence data from table 7.2 of Kelly (1995).
c
Descent data from Marlowe (2004), using the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample.

This content downloaded from 142.104.240.194 on Sat, 13 Apr 2013 07:05:28 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Smith et al. Wealth Transmission and Inequality among Hunter-Gatherers 21

Table 2. Summary characteristics of hunter-gatherer societies in the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (SCSS)

Variablea Categories (societies)b

Residential mobility (V150) Nomadic: 32% (12); seminomadic: 39% (15); semisedentary: 21% (8); sedentary: 8% (3)
Land ownership (V1726) Predominantly private: 8% (2); partially communal: 16% (4); communal only: 76% (19)
Land inheritance (V278) No individual inheritance: 90% (28); matrilineal: 3% (1); patrilineal: 6% (2)
Movable property inheritance (V279) No individual inheritance: 35% (10); matrilineal: 7% (2); patrilineal: 45% (13); bilateral: 14% (4)
Social stratification (V158) Egalitarian: 68% (26); hereditary slavery: 24% (9); social classes: 8% (3)
Primary sources of political power (V93) Subsistence production: 82% (31); political or religious office: 11% (4); warfare booty: 5% (2);
trade: 3% (1)
a
“Vn” indicates variable number in the SCSS (Divale, Khaltourina, and Korotayev 2002; Murdock and White 1980).
b
Percent (number) of hunter-gatherer societies in the sample for a given variable. Percentage is calculated on cases with data available (excluding
missing cases from the denominator). Societies were selected when V858 (predominant subsistence) was listed as hunting, gathering, fishing, or
anadromous fishing (types 1–4).

exclusion from many resource-rich habitats (by agricultural
peoples), results in lower population densities and much
smaller camps or villages than is typical of horticultural and
agricultural populations (see table 1; compare with Gurven
et al. 2010 and Shenk et al. 2010, in this issue). Comparative
analyses of fertility have demonstrated that forager popula-
tions have somewhat lower fertility rates than agricultural (but
not necessarily horticultural or pastoral) populations (Bentley,
Goldberg, and Jasieńska 1993; Sellen and Mace 1997). This
difference has, in turn, been ascribed to the effects of lower
mobility and more early-weaning foods in agricultural pop-
ulations; however, detailed cross-cultural analysis shows that
agropastoral populations do not differ from foragers in wean-
ing-food availability or average age at weaning but do have
earlier onset of weaning (Sellen 2007; Sellen and Smay 2001).
Juvenile survival rates are also lower in well-studied forager
populations than in horticultural and pastoral ones (Gurven
and Kaplan 2007).
Wealth and Inequality in Hunter-
Gatherer Societies
As detailed in Bowles, Smith, and Borgerhoff Mulder (2010,
in this issue; see also Borgerhoff Mulder et al. 2009), we define
wealth as any attribute of an individual that contributes to a
flow of valued goods or services. This broad definition is
subdivided into “wealth classes” (embodied, material, and
relational wealth), each encompassing various “wealth types”
(e.g., hunting success, household goods, and sharing part-
nerships), as detailed below.
Our collective judgment, based on many years of field re-
search and the published ethnographic corpus, is that in most
foraging societies, variation in material wealth has less effect
on well-being than does variation in other forms of wealth,
such as health or social connections. This generalization is
more likely to hold for mobile, low-density foragers (which
constitute the great majority of ethnographically described
foraging societies; see tables 1, 2) than for sedentary, high-
density foragers. There are at least three reasons for this. First,
high mobility reduces the possibility or profitability of in-
vestment in land or fixed facilities (e.g., weirs, permanent
houses). Accordingly, land ownership among high-mobility
groups is overwhelmingly communal and cannot be trans-
mitted to individuals or kin groups (table 2). Second, reduced
mobility depends on dense and predictable resource patches
(e.g., salmon streams), and access to these patches is often
controlled by kin groups or other subsets of the population;
if variation in patch productivity is great enough, those who
control the richest patches can exchange access to them for
economic and political services (Boone 1992; Smith and Choi
2007). When resource abundance is less concentrated, access
is harder to control; individuals can therefore resist any moves
toward institutionalized inequality, including “voting with
their feet” to relocate elsewhere if necessary. Finally, mobility
makes it harder to accumulate material property. Moveable
material property, such as tools, clothing, and valuables, is
generally treated as individual property and is often trans-
mitted to descendant kin (table 2). In most foraging societies,
however, such property can usually be manufactured by any
adult of the appropriate gender or obtained fairly readily;
exceptions include items involving highly specialized manu-
facture or obtained through limited trade contacts, as well as
wealth and prestige goods in some sedentary, less egalitarian
societies.
Most adults in hunter-gatherer societies actively contribute
to food production and processing as well as tool manufacture
and maintenance. In addition, child care and provisioning
are generally parental duties. Most of these forms of labor
require considerable strength and stamina, visual acuity, and
other aspects of good health. As a result, we expect somatic
wealth to be of prime importance to success and well-being.
On the other hand, those who suffer periodically from sub-
optimal somatic endowments can usually rely on aid from
others in the form of food sharing, assistance with child care,
and protection in disputes. This social insurance is normative
and widely available, but some evidence suggests that the
quality of such aid will vary according to the “relational
wealth” (reputation, size, and quality of the social network)
of the needy individual or household (Gurven et al. 2000;
Nolin 2008; Wiessner 2002).

This content downloaded from 142.104.240.194 on Sat, 13 Apr 2013 07:05:28 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 22 Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010

Table 3. Descriptive features of project populations in comparison to other hunter-gatherers

Population Population density a Mobility (moves/year)b Residential group size Reliance on fishing Reliance on hunting

Ache .04 75–100 43.4 Low High

Hadza .24 7 29.3 None Moderate
Ju/’hoansi .07 5.5 17.4 None Moderate
Lamalera 67.40 0 1,200 High High
Meriam 86.00 0 430 High Low
Average 30.75 20.0 344.1 ... ...
Marlowe databasec .30 7.4 41.4 32.3% 30.8%
a
Density in people/km2, as compiled by Marlowe (2005) or observed by project ethnographers (published work or personal communication).
b
Observed moves per year of camp or village (sources as above).
c
With exceptions noted in “Hunter-Gatherer Production Systems” and footnote a of table 1.

Knowledge presents some special difficulties. Information
needed to successfully harvest resources and process them
into food or other goods is widely available (on a gender-
specific basis), although some exceptions apply, particularly
in more sedentary foraging societies (e.g., manufacture of
complex watercraft). Knowledge concerning ritual practices
and trading partnerships, however, is often more differentially
distributed. Commonly, certain individuals have esoteric
knowledge held to be useful in curing illness, combating sor-
cery, or predicting weather and availability of game. Although
relatively few hunter-gatherer societies have well-defined so-
cial strata or politico-religious offices (table 2), our impression
is that the great majority do recognize important differences
in specialized realms of knowledge, differences that may have
status correlates and yet coexist with normative and de facto
egalitarianism in other forms of wealth (e.g., Bird and Bliege
Bird 2009).
In sum, a primary constraint on material-wealth accu-
mulation and inequality in hunter-gatherer societies is the
degree of residential mobility, which in turn is heavily influ-
enced by spatiotemporal resource variability (Cashdan 1992;
Kelly 1995). Generalizations about wealth and inequality dif-
fer greatly, depending on whether one focuses on the more
mobile low-density foragers or on the smaller set of sedentary,
high-density foragers; the latter, after all, includes societies
(e.g., Northwest Coast, Calusa) with slavery, hereditary no-
bility, stores of durable valuables, and other features strongly
related to intergenerational wealth transmission.
Ethnographic Sample and Methods
Overview of Sample Populations
The five populations discussed and analyzed in detail below
include the Ache of South America, the Hadza and the
Ju/’hoansi of sub-Saharan Africa, the Lamalerans of southeast
Asia, and the Meriam of Melanesia. In addition, we provide
an analysis of hunting-return rates among the Tsimane, a
South American horticulturalist-forager society discussed at
length by Gurven et al. (2010).
Three of these populations (Ache, Hadza, and Ju/’hoansi)
are clearly at the low-density, high-mobility end of the scale,
with values in these measures, as well as residential group
size, close to the averages for a large sample of foragers (table
3), although Ache in the presettlement period have very high
estimated residential mobility. In contrast, two populations
are very sedentary and (for foragers) of high density: La-
malerans (coastal sea hunters) and Meriam (coastal fisher-
horticulturalists), each inhabiting one large village. It is note-
worthy that the two high-density populations are character-
ized by high reliance on marine resources, a pattern found
in larger samples of forager populations (tables 6-2, 6-4 in
Kelly 1995; figs. 4, 5 in Marlowe 2005). However, even the
Lamalerans and Meriam display relatively low levels of so-
cioeconomic inequality, compared to some other sedentary
coastal foragers, such as Northwest Coast Indians, Chumash,
or Calusa.
Ache
Ethnographic background. The Northern Ache lived as isolated
hunter-gatherers in the tropical forests of eastern Paraguay
until peaceful contacts with outsiders in the 1970s. At first
contact the population contained 557 individuals, scattered
in a dozen or more residential bands of flexible composition
roaming a region of about 20,000 km2. The traditional econ-
omy was based on hunting medium-sized mammals (about
80% of all calories came from armadillos, paca, white-lipped
peccaries, capuchin monkeys, and tapir) with bow and arrow,
extracting palm starch and hearts (about 10% of all calories),
and collecting larvae, honey, and fruits (about 10% of all
calories). Residential bands were highly cooperative, with in-
dividuals regularly adopting complementary roles in food ac-
quisition through the day (Hill 2002) and sharing all game
and a good portion of other foods among most band members
(Kaplan and Hill 1985). Band members also regularly cared
for each other’s children and freely exchanged or provided a
variety of goods and services. Only mate acquisition was
markedly competitive rather than cooperative.
Ache residential bands ideally centered around a father and
his adult sons, but in practice bands often consisted of bi-
lateral kin (a core set of brothers, or brothers and sisters, their
children, some affinal kin, etc.). Membership in these bands

This content downloaded from 142.104.240.194 on Sat, 13 Apr 2013 07:05:28 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Smith et al. Wealth Transmission and Inequality among Hunter-Gatherers
changed frequently, although core sets of kin were almost
always together. Bands had no formal leadership; there were
no ritual or ceremonial divisions and no marriage prescrip-
tions or proscriptions other than avoidance of all first cousins.
Club fights were organized as a form of ritual combat between
men with grudges, and close kin alliances often determined
“teams” of combatants. Status was attained through killing
others, hunting skill, and personal charisma related to oratory
skills and emotional connections. Women participated in de-
cisions but did not wield influence equal to that of men, and
they were often quite subservient. Their main activities were
intensive child care (the forest contains many mortal dangers
for small children), transportation of family goods, and ex-
traction of palm products.
After contact in the 1970s, the Northern Ache, along with
three other independent dialect groups of Ache, were relo-
cated to six reservation settlements. Three of these, near the
Mbaracayú forest reserve, have been intensively studied. The
reservation economy is based on subsistence farming (man-
ioc, maize, beans, peanuts, melons, etc.) and frequent treks
into the forest. A few individuals are engaged in nearby wage
labor (or teach school). More details on general aspects of
Ache ethnography are available in other publications (e.g.,
Hill 1994; Hill and Hurtado 1996, 1999), and approximately
130 publications on the behavioral ecology of the Ache are
available at Kim Hill’s research Web site (http://www.public
.asu.edu/˜krhill3/Publications.html).
Wealth measures. Ache “wealth” can be conceptualized in
three dimensions. First, some individuals produce more re-
sources on a consistent basis (higher income), and when alone
or in small camps, they and their families experience higher
resource consumption. If excess production is shared in a
partially contingent fashion, high producers may also obtain
a greater share of the valuable contributions of other band
members (including food but also other goods and services).
But differential access to the goods and services of others
(including reproductive access) can also be attained through
high-quality social relationships, which constitute a second,
nonmaterial form of Ache wealth. Finally, both production
levels and social relationships are affected by embodied wealth
(body size, health, cognitive ability, etc.), which also affects
basic fitness components, such as mortality and fertility rates.
Thus, transmissible wealth comes in the form of somatic en-
dowment, productive ability, and social relationships, all of
which are potentially heritable.
Body weight is a good measure of somatic endowment
because growth is an indicator of childhood disease resistance
and because body size associates positively with productive
potential and fertility in mammals (Hill and Hurtado 1996).
Ache weight has been repeatedly measured with an electronic
bathroom scale since 1980. The body weights of all individuals
who were measured when over age 18 were employed for
analyses. Parental weight was defined as the average of
mother’s and father’s weights, with controls for single parents
as well as for age and sex of offspring (see the CA⫹ online
This content downloaded from 142.104.240.194 on Sat, 13 Apr 2013 07:05:28 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
23
supplement “Estimating the Inheritance of Wealth in Pre-
modern Societies” in the online edition of Current Anthro-
pology for details).
Hunting-return rates are the best measure of variability in
overall food production for Ache men (there is no equivalent
measurement for women). We have monitored the hunting
success of Ache men in three communities since 1980. Early
data were derived from direct observation by focal follows.
Return rates in more recent years are based on informant-
reported hunting success in weekly systematic interviews. All
data were converted to a daily return rate (kilograms of game
live weight per day of hunting), and the average was calculated
for each man during each 5-year period from 1980 to 2007
(Hill and Kintigh 2009). Five-year averages were plotted by
mean age of each hunter during the period and then
smoothed with a Lowess regression in order to determine the
age shape of the hunting-returns function. The residual of
each man’s average from the Lowess age curve was then used
to calculate how much above or below the typical hunting
returns (in kg/day) each man was for his age. The residuals
from each 5-year period for each man were then averaged
over his lifetime to get a measure of how good a hunter he
had been for his age during the entire 27 years of monitoring.
Son’s-age residuals of hunting-return rate were regressed on
father’s-age residuals in order to determine whether men who
were good hunters for their age had sons who are also good
hunters for their age. These estimates were also corrected for
measurement error; reliability was determined by comparing
many-period averages (which were available for some hunt-
ers) to averages over subsets of the full period. The overall
reliability of the hunting data was estimated to be 0.68.
Hadza
Ethnographic background. The Hadza live in a savanna-wood-
land habitat around Lake Eyasi, south of Ngorongoro Crater
and Serengeti National Park in northern Tanzania. Our best
estimate of the population is 1,000 (Jones, Hawkes, and
O’Connell 2002). Hadza live in camps that average 30 people
and change location about every 1.5 months; people often
visit or move to other camps as well. This fluid movement
helps explain Hadza egalitarianism; when anyone tries to boss
others around, the latter simply move away from the bossy
person (Woodburn 1982). The most common form of Hadza
camp consists of two or three sisters and their families; when
their mother is alive, she is likely to also reside in the same
camp (Jones, Hawkes, and O’Connell 2005; Woodburn 1964).
The Hadza are central-place provisioners (Marlowe 2006).
They often feed themselves while foraging but also take food
back to camp. Women gather fruit and berries and dig tubers,
usually in groups of three to eight, plus some children. Be-
cause all women in a foraging party tend to have a haul of
the same foods, most of their food may go to their own
households, but often it is shared with anyone in camp. Once
back in camp, women roast some of their tubers to feed all
 24
the children present or send them to a group of men sitting
in the men’s place. Men collect honey and use bows and
arrows to hunt a wide range of game, from small (e.g., rock
hyrax) to large (e.g., giraffe). Men usually hunt alone. Once
an animal is hit, the hunter may return to camp and get other
men to help him track the wounded animal. When men bring
honey back to camp, it is often shared with those present,
but unlike larger game, it can sometimes be concealed and
directed to a man’s household (Marlowe 2003). When men
bring medium-sized and large game into camp, it is shared
widely across households (Hawkes, O’Connell, and Jones
2001a; Woodburn 1998), but even small game and honey are
often shared widely. Despite the widespread sharing, on av-
erage the portion of a hunter’s catch retained in his household
is larger than the share given to each other household (B. M.
Wood and F. W. Marlowe, unpublished manuscript).
Hadza have no land or property inheritance or accumulated
material wealth. Even though the group is extremely egali-
tarian, men who are the best hunters have slightly more pres-
tige as well as more surviving offspring (Hawkes, O’Connell,
and Jones 2001a, 2001b; Marlowe 1999, 2003). They achieve
the latter not by having more wives over time but by having
a higher chance of marrying young women upon divorce
(Marlowe 2000). Hadza women usually acquire a great deal
of food well into their seventies. Hawkes, O’Connell, and
Jones (2001b) found that children’s growth rates were pre-
dicted by their mothers’ food returns rather than by their
fathers’ food returns. They concluded that better hunters
achieve their greater reproductive success (RS) by marrying
better gatherers. However, their sample was small and covered
only 12 months. In a preliminary analysis of a much larger
data set, there is no evidence that husbands and wives are
assortatively mated with regard to foraging returns. When
stepfathers are excluded, men do bring in more food when
they have more dependants (Marlowe 1999, 2003).
Wealth measures. The wealth measures used here are weight,
grip strength, and foraging success. These measures get at
biological traits that might be relevant for other traits that
could be counted as social capital, such as foraging skills. The
anthropometric data were taken on all people in camp, and
many people were measured more than once per year over
the years 2001–2006. Stature and weight were measured by
previous researchers, and there has been little or no change
in the Hadza over the years (Hiernaux and Hartono 1980;
Jones 2006; Marlowe and Berbesque 2009). Weight was mea-
sured with a Tanita bioelectrical impedance scale, and grip
strength was measured with a dynamometer. Strength appears
to be important among the Hadza. Women need strength to
dig tubers; men need it to pull larger bows, which send arrows
to their target faster, and to chop into trees to access honey.
Both sexes need to carry heavy loads of food (and often
children) long distances. Weight and strength, which are cor-
related, account for much of the effect that age alone has on
these skills. Weight predicted kilograms of tubers acquired per
This content downloaded from 142.104.240.194 on Sat, 13 Apr 2013 07:05:28 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
hour by women, men, and children, and strength was cor-
related with archery skill for males (Jones and Marlowe 2002).
Foraging success was measured for a composite of all for-
aging activity. The raw data are a person’s sum total of all
foods brought back to camp per observation day. The weight
of foods brought into camp was converted to kilocalories to
compute a foraging-productivity score (mean daily kilocal-
ories) for each camp resident: men, women, and children.
During the observation periods, almost all women and all
men went out from camp to forage every day, women for an
average of about 4 hours and men for about 6 hours. The
measure of parent-offspring correspondence in foraging suc-
cess reported here excludes mother-daughter pairs, because
they usually dug tubers together and thus including them
would overestimate actual correspondences.
Ju/’hoansi
Ethnographic background. The Ju/’hoansi Bushmen of the Kal-
ahari Desert are one of the most thoroughly egalitarian so-
cieties known in the ethnographic record, enforcing both
“equality of opportunity” as young people start out in life
and “equality of outcome” throughout the life cycle. Those
who seek to possess more material goods, food, or status are
leveled by other group members (Lee 1979; Wiessner 2005).
Nonetheless, those who excel in hunting, healing, hxaro ex-
change, and social skills and return benefits to the groups are
recognized as //haiha (//aihadi for women), which can be
glossed as “one who has things” or “leader” (Wiessner 2002).
The Ju/’hoansi population of some 2,000 considered here
inhabits northwestern Botswana and northeastern Namibia
(Biesele 1993; Howell 2000; Lee 1979; Lee and DeVore 1976;
Marshall 1976; Shostak 1981; Wilmsen 1989). Until the mid-
1970s, Ju/’hoansi subsisted primarily through foraging. When
living as foragers, the Ju/’hoan bands inhabited territories with
enough food and water to sustain a band in the average year.
Each Ju/’hoan man and woman inherited access to the ter-
ritory of his or her mother and father and could claim a
strong hold by assembling kin with similar rights to jointly
occupy the land. Spatial and temporal variation in resources,
including the availability of water, was high. To buffer them-
selves from environmental and social risks, the Ju/’hoansi
engaged in a system of exchange called hxaro, a delayed ex-
change of gifts indicating an underlying relationship of com-
mitment to mutual support in times of need.
Wealth measures. The wealth measure used here is number
of hxaro partners, a measure of relational wealth. On average,
the Ju/’hoansi in the early 1970s had 16 hxaro partners (range
2–42), who were well distributed in space within a radius of
200 km and over different ages, sexes, and abilities. When in
need, a person would pack up his or her family, visit a partner,
and reside in that camp for as long as necessary. Census data
collected by Richard Lee and Polly Wiessner indicate that 93%
of all recorded extended visits were made to hxaro partners
and that, on average, 3.3 months a year were spent living in
Smith et al. Wealth Transmission and Inequality among Hunter-Gatherers
the camps of partners (Wiessner 1981, 1982). Hxaro part-
nerships were usually formed with consanguineous kin; they
were inherited from either parent or formed during a lifetime
with siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, and so on, but only
with affines in exceptional cases. Because of rules for exogamy,
it was extremely rare that spouses shared the same hxaro
partners.
Spheres of hxaro waxed and waned throughout the life
cycle. Young people began their reproductive career with an
average of 13 partnerships, enough to see them through hard
times. When the first of their children matured to marriage-
able age, Ju/’hoansi doubled their spheres of hxaro, to an
average of 24 partners. With old age and decreased mobility
and productive capacity, elders’ hxaro spheres narrowed to
an average of 12 partners. Partnerships could be passed to
children by parents as they aged or at their funerals, when
their children would take some of their possessions, give them
to one of the deceased’s partners, and ask that the relationship
be continued. Ju/’hoansi marriages were arranged, and hxaro
played a major role in locating spouses and contracting mar-
riages. Hxaro partnerships were linked together to form chains
that wound for hundreds of kilometers through the Kalahari
and tapped into the broader trade networks of southern Af-
rica. Ju/’hoansi who were well connected in hxaro had a better
chance of acquiring desired material possessions from afar.
Data on hxaro ties were collected from 59 individuals in
three randomly selected villages, including both residents and
visitors to the village who stayed for weeks or months during
the four-month period of the study. Individuals were first
asked to list all of their hxaro partners, their name, sex, age,
marital status, kin relation to ego, area of land rights, and
current residence. Subsequently, individuals in the sample
were asked to lay out all of their worldly possessions and
discuss how they had obtained each one. Of 1,483 possessions
recorded, 69% were received in hxaro from listed partners,
27% were recently bought or made, and 4% were received
from non-Bushmen or Bushmen who were not hxaro part-
ners. Number of hxaro partners correlated with number of
possessions owned by the individual, number of possible al-
ternative residences, hunting success for men, ability as a
healer, and social competence (Wiessner 2002).
Lamalera
Ethnographic background. Lamalera is a village of just over
1,200 people and about 317 households located on the island
of Lembata in southeastern Indonesia. In the past, Lamalera
might have been characterized as a complex foraging society.
A permanent resident population subsisted almost entirely by
maritime foraging and trading with agricultural villages of the
interior. Differences in material wealth among households
were likely less pronounced in the past than they are now,
but status differences existed. Two autochthonous clans and
three founding clans claimed greater status and authority than
the other clans, which, according to tradition, arrived later.
This content downloaded from 142.104.240.194 on Sat, 13 Apr 2013 07:05:28 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
25
This created a broad, horizontal hierarchy among clans. A
man’s social status was tied to that of his clan or to his
personal prowess as a hunter (Alvard and Gillespie 2004) and
his material success to that of his lineage, whose members
cooperatively operated a whaling boat, or téna. (Alvard 2003;
Alvard and Nolin 2002).
In the early 1900s, the Catholic Church brought formal
education to the village (Barnes 1996). With this development,
Lamalerans were well positioned to take advantage of op-
portunities in the expanding Dutch (and later Indonesian)
civil administrative infrastructure. Expansion of the wage la-
bor market outside the village brought further opportunities.
The consequent emigration has been a feature of Lamaleran
demography for most of the past century (Barnes 1986). The
traditional authority structure among clans continues to dom-
inate the internal affairs of the village. However, there is now
more social differentiation among individual families, based
on success of kin outside the village. Despite these changes,
in 2006 the economy within the village remained largely a
subsistence economy of fishing and hunting. Aside from
school teaching and a handful of government posts, there
were no wage labor opportunities within the village.
Wealth measures. Four wealth measures are available for
Lamalera: household wealth, sharing-network ties, boat
shares, and RS. Household wealth is an indication of the
household’s access to money and can also be interpreted as
a proximate measure of the household’s connection to the
market economy. Household wealth is measured on an eight-
point Mokken scale based on features of residents’ homes (see
Nolin 2008). Houses are traditionally inherited by the youn-
gest son, unless the house is the lineage’s great house, in which
case the oldest son has the right of inheritance. However, in
2006 most houses (70%) had been built by their current
occupants. Neolocality has long been encouraged by the
Church, and a house is considered by most to be a prerequisite
for marriage. Young unmarried men often pursue wage labor
opportunities in regional towns to save money for the con-
struction of a home. Parents may also contribute to these
costs, if able, as may emigrant kin. Remittances from suc-
cessful emigrant siblings or offspring may also be an impor-
tant source of cash for later improvements to the house. Cor-
relations between parents’ and a child’s household wealth may
therefore be due to similar access to outside remittances rather
than to transfers of wealth from the parents to the child.
Sharing ties to and from a household are an indication of
how well the household is buffered against harvest variance.
In addition, the people with whom one has established sharing
relationships may also be those on whom one can rely for
other forms of aid. In this respect, sharing-network ties may
be a proxy for one’s broader support network. The measure
used here sums together the number of other households to
whom the focal household usually gives food (its out-degree)
and the number of other households from whom the focal
household usually receives food (its in-degree). These data
were collected by household census in 2006. Secondary shar-
 26
ing in Lamalera is completely discretionary. There are no
formally recognized sharing partnerships, such as are found
in some other societies, and therefore no sharing roles to
inherit. However, parents and children may have similarly
sized sharing networks for a number of reasons. First, they
are kin to the same people, and since sharing occurs more
commonly among kin, this may lead to similar network ties.
Second, when children reside near their parents, they may
share with the same neighboring nonrelatives. Finally, parents
and children have similar access to resources, which may make
them similarly attractive to others as sharing partners and
similarly able to give to others.
Household boat shares were calculated as the sum of shares
in boats held by all residents of a household. Shares can vary
in size, depending on the type of shares, the number of holders
of that share type, and the prey type caught (see Alvard 2002
for discussion), but here they are counted as single units.
Shares in whaling boats remain the primary source of food
for most Lamaleran households. Obtaining such shares de-
pends largely on kinship, but being able to contribute to boat
maintenance, as well as having the support of other share-
holders, may also be important factors. Shares are inherited
by the surviving spouse, provided there is one. Otherwise, the
shareholder’s resident sons divide the share. These rights per-
sist only until share rights are reallocated, which happens
periodically, when the boat undergoes refurbishment. Boats
are owned by lineages, and adult members of the owning
lineage may secure a share at this time by contributing to the
costs of refurbishment. Those who already hold a boat share
are also expected to contribute, if able, in order to retain their
share. Some roles in the boat (boat master, harpooner, master
carpenter) are nominally heritable, but if an heir shows no
interest, then someone else may take the role.
For Lamalera, RS was defined as the number of offspring
surviving to at least 1 year. Reproductive histories were col-
lected in 2006 for all current household heads and their
spouses. Respondents were specifically asked about deceased
children and were asked to provide ages of death. Infant and
child mortality is high in Lamalera, so living offspring aged
less than 1 year were discounted by the probability of sur-
viving to 1 year.
Meriam
Ethnographic background. Mer (aka Murray Island) is a small
island in Torres Strait, between mainland Australia and Papua
New Guinea. Meriam, the indigenous residents of Mer and
adjacent islands, have linguistic, genetic, and cultural links to
the south coast of Papua New Guinea and to Melanesia more
broadly. The island’s 1998 population was 430 individuals of
Meriam descent, residing in approximately 85 households
(plus a handful of temporary non-Meriam residents). The
Torres Strait as a whole is administered by the State of Queens-
land and the Commonwealth of Australia. Although many
Meriam men had long been engaged in industries in Australia
This content downloaded from 142.104.240.194 on Sat, 13 Apr 2013 07:05:28 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
(especially pearling, sugarcane, and railroads), until about
1975, when Australian welfare payments were first made avail-
able to all indigenous Australians, the Meriam on the islands
were nearly full-time subsistence horticulturalists and marine
foragers. Subsistence revolved around planting tropical yams,
bananas, sugarcane, coconuts, and introduced New World
crops such as manioc, sweet potatoes, and corn and harvesting
marine fish, shellfish, and sea turtles. Today, horticulture is
nearly moribund, and carbohydrates and other goods are
readily purchased at the community store. Yet fishing, hunt-
ing, and shellfish collecting remain critical components of
Meriam subsistence economy: mean daily per capita con-
sumption rates in 1998 averaged 630 kilocalories of meat and
40 grams of protein. More than 80% of these calories were
supplied by turtle during the nesting season. (For additional
ethnographic description, see Beckett 1988; Bliege Bird and
Bird 1997; Haddon 1906; Sharp 1993.)
Success in turtle hunting plays an important role in status
differences among Meriam men. Hunting of green sea turtles
(Chelonia mydas) occurs throughout the year but particularly
during the nonnesting season (May–September). Hunting is
a cooperative, entirely male pursuit with distinct roles: youn-
ger men serve as crew members or “jumpers” (arpeir le) under
the direction of the hunt leaders (ariemer le), who are gen-
erally older, with more skill and experience, and are ultimately
held responsible for the success or failure of hunts. Typically,
turtles obtained through hunting (as contrasted with turtles
collected on the beach during the nesting season) are dis-
tributed to multiple households or to islandwide feasts, and
the hunters receive no material recompense (Bliege Bird,
Smith, and Bird 2001; Bliege Bird et al. 2002; Smith and Bliege
Bird 2000; Smith, Bliege Bird, and Bird 2003).
Wealth measures. Meriam have complex rules of land own-
ership and inheritance involving both patrilineal clans and
some land inheritance by unmarried daughters (or other des-
ignated female heirs). However, detailed land ownership data
for a representative sample of Meriam are not available; in
addition, with the near cessation of horticulture in recent
years, the effects of land inheritance on other social and eco-
nomic variables is likely much diminished. Inheritance of
other substantial material property is for the most part a very
recent phenomenon, as permanent housing and other durable
goods have not been widespread until the past several decades;
the prime exception to this would be prized double-outrigger
canoes, but these have been displaced by motorboats.
The only wealth measure used here is male RS, measured
as number of children alive at time of data collection (1998),
regardless of age. It is customary to adjust for early-childhood
mortality by measuring only offspring surviving to at least
age 5; however, because residents of Mer have access to a
staffed medical clinic and fairly rapid air evacuation to a
hospital, such mortality is relatively low: ca. 6% cumulative
mortality to age 5 (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare
2005). There is some artificial contraception practiced, but
incidence data are not available; Meriam birth rates have been
Smith et al. Wealth Transmission and Inequality among Hunter-Gatherers
relatively low before access to such technology, for at least a
century (Haddon 1901–1935).
Results and Discussion
Wealth Classes and Their Importance
After considerable group discussion, each researcher esti-
mated a value for each of the major wealth classes (embodied,
material, and relational) in the population she/he studied.
These values, which we label a, are defined as the percentage
change in a family’s well-being associated with a percentage
change in the wealth class in question, holding other wealth
classes constant at the average level. The a estimates are frac-
tions that sum to unity, reflecting their derivation from the
Cobb-Douglas production function (see Gurven et al. 2010
for details). The estimates for our five focal hunter-gatherer
populations are provided in table 4. Note that the a values
are not statistical estimates based on measurements but rather
judgments of each researcher based on months or years of
fieldwork with each respective population.
The researchers generally agreed that relational wealth is of
greatest importance, but beyond that there is no clear con-
sensus (table 4). However, the relative a values for embodied
and material wealth roughly correspond to the position of
these five societies along the mobility/density continuum, with
the most mobile populations (Ache, Hadza) having high val-
ues for embodied and very low values for material wealth,
the sedentary/high-density populations roughly equal a’s for
these two categories of wealth, and the Ju/’hoansi grouping
with the sedentary populations despite their low density and
relatively high mobility (table 4). Ju/’hoansi place considerable
emphasis on ties to particular homelands (n!ore) to which
they have foraging rights based on kinship and residence (Lee
1979; Wiessner 2002; also see above), a form of (communal)
material wealth; in contrast, Ache and Hadza practice much
more open-access foraging on their lands.
Intergenerational Wealth Transmission
As discussed by Bowles, Smith, and Borgerhoff Mulder
(2010), we measure intergenerational wealth transmission
with the unit-free coefficient b, which estimates the “elas-
ticity” in wealth for parent-offspring pairs, or the percentage
change in wealth in the second generation associated with a
1% change in parental wealth. Table 5 presents these wealth-
transmission measures by wealth type for each of the five
focal populations (plus one measure for Tsimane, otherwise
treated in Gurvern et al. 2010). Sample sizes vary substantially,
tending to be larger for more easily measured variables, and
range from 26 parent-offspring pairs to nearly 200. The
method of calculating b requires comparable information on
parents and offspring and sometimes sex-specific pairings.
Censoring due to death before study or to emigration from
the study area leaves many unpaired individuals.
We have eight measures of four types of embodied wealth
This content downloaded from 142.104.240.194 on Sat, 13 Apr 2013 07:05:28 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
27
Table 4. Estimates of a exponents for hunter-gatherer
societies in the project sample
Wealth class
Population Embodied Material Relational
Ache .50 .05 .45
Hadza .70 .00 .30
Ju/’hoansi .35 .25 .40
Lamalera .35 .25 .40
Meriam .40 .20 .40
Average .46 .15 .39
from five populations: weight, grip strength, RS, and foraging
success. In contrast, material wealth is represented by only
two measures (shares in whaling-boat harvest and an index
of housing quality), both from Lamalera. Similarly, relational
wealth is represented by only two measures, exchange (hxaro)
partners among Ju/’hoansi and food-sharing partners in La-
malera. Given this very uneven representation, it is not rea-
sonable to make statistical comparisons between wealth classes
for just the hunter-gatherer cases; instead, see Smith et al.
(2010, in this issue), where measures from the full set of
societies can be compared.
We can, however, offer interpretations of particular wealth
measures in individual societies. With regard to intergener-
ational transmission of hunting skills, the Ache results show
no relationship between fathers’ and sons’ age-corrected hunt-
ing-return rates (fig. 1A). This might seem surprising, since
men do inherit the genetic component of their father’s so-
matic traits (body size, strength, athleticism, intelligence, etc.),
which should have some impact on hunting success. However,
all Ache boys hunt with many different men, receive little or
no formal instruction from their fathers, and often do not
live with biological fathers during teen years. Thus, the lack
of a relationship between the hunting success of fathers and
that of sons is not a complete surprise. Ache men whom Hill
has interviewed suggest that most of their skill came from
their own practice during teen years in the forest and from
listening to stories by other men as well as from observing
the hunting process (but not necessarily with their fathers as
models). The similar measure for the Hadza (foraging success)
includes gathering as well as hunting and females as well as
males (although mother-daughter pairs are excluded from the
calculated b, for reasons explained above); it also is close to
0.
In contrast, among the Tsimane we find a quite high b
(0.384) for father-son hunting returns, measured as calories
gained per hour spent foraging. Young Tsimane males are
likely to go hunting with their fathers (and sometimes other
male relatives) until they can hunt alone, generally in their
late teen years. Thus, there is a greater likelihood that a Tsi-
mane hunter had his father as the prime or even only model
for hunting skills in his formative years than is the case for
the Ache, and fathers who hunt frequently may be more likely
 28 Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010

Table 5. Wealth transmission and inequality measures for hunter-gatherer populations

b transmission
Wealth class,a population Wealth type (N pairs) coefficient (SE) P valueb Gini coefficient (SE)

Embodied:
Ache Hunting returns (49) .081 (.273) .768 .237 (.014)
Tsimane Hunting returns (26) .384 (.130) .003 .371 (.037)
Hadza Foraging returns (39) .047 (.193) .808 .339 (.018)
Lamalera Reproductive success (121) .161 (.174) .355 .296 (.012)
Meriam Reproductive success (91) .088 (.247) .722 .298 (.024)
Hadza Grip strength (196) ⫺.044 (.050) .386 .191 (.006)
Ache Weight (137) .509 (.128) .000 .064 (.003)
Hadza Weight (227) .305 (.076) .000 .079 (.002)
Average .164 (.057) .007 .215 (.045)
Material:
Lamalera Boat shares (121) .122 (.093) .190 .474 (.010)
Lamalera Housing quality (121) .218 (.099) .027 .241 (.007)
Average .170 (.106) .119 .357 (.084)
Relational:
Ju/’hoansi Exchange partners (26) .208 (.114) .067 .216 (.028)
Lamalera Sharing partners (119) .251 (.052) .000 .263 (.010)
Average .229 (.106) .038 .229 (.106)
Overall averagec .19 (.05) .001 .25 (.04)
a
See “Ethnographic Sample and Methods” for explanation of the classes “embodied,” “material,” and “relational.”
b
Calculated from two-tailed tests of hypothesis that true b for a given wealth type or class equals 0.
c
Overall averages computed from the wealth-class averages, weighted by importance (a) of each wealth class (see table 4).

to have sons who actively hunt. Dyads come from four in-
terfluvial Tsimane villages where hunting is fairly common
because of the low population density and the near proximity
of remote forest (Gurven, Kaplan, and Gutierrez 2006); since
local animal densities and other conditions affect hunting-
return rates, the b for Tsimane hunting returns was calculated
with village dummy variables to control for any possibility
that we were measuring the effects of correlation in location
of father-son pairs rather than transmission of ability or skill.
Neither of the b values for RS rise to high levels. The lack
of association between parents’ and children’s RS among La-
malerans has several possible explanations. One is that co-
operative acquisition of food, followed by food sharing
between households, tends to reduce differences between
households in access to food resources. Another possibility is
that the lack of association is due to generational changes in
fertility patterns. There is some evidence (D. Nolin, unpub-
lished data) that the age at marriage in Lamalera has increased
substantially throughout the twentieth century. A secular
trend toward delayed reproduction and reduced fertility may
reduce any association between parents’ and children’s RS.
While crewmen, and especially harpooners, exhibit higher RS
than do nonhunters (Alvard and Gillespie 2004), any man
can participate in the fishery. The role of harpooner is nom-
inally heritable, but in practice it can be pursued by any youth
who shows promise.
Previous research with the Meriam has shown that being
a turtle hunter, and particularly being a hunt leader, is as-
sociated with greatly elevated age-specific RS (Smith, Bliege
Bird, and Bird 2003). This RS differential is not found for
Meriam men who have reputations as particularly good fish-
ermen, political leaders, traditional dancers, “ladies’ men,” or
“hard workers.” Among Meriam women, those with repu-
tations as “hardworking” do have somewhat elevated mean
RS, but these women are disproportionately married to turtle
hunters (Smith, Bliege Bird, and Bird 2003). The estimated
transmission coefficient for Meriam parent-child RS is effec-
tively nil (table 5). This agrees with previous findings that
pairs of Meriam brothers of roughly the same age in which
only one is a turtle hunter show the same divergence in RS
as the full set of Meriam hunters versus nonhunters, and that
patrilineage does not predict hunting role (Smith, Bliege Bird,
and Bird 2003). The conclusion seems to be that whatever
combination of abilities, experience, and motivation leads
some Meriam men to succeed in turtle hunting or other RS-
correlated attributes does not tend to be passed from parent
to offspring. Similarly, differences in female RS in this pop-
ulation do not seem to correlate with parentage. Given the
relatively egalitarian nature of Meriam social life and the em-
phasis on personal achievement, these results are as might be
expected. Although the sample size is small (91 pairs, smallest
of the whole set of 12 RS measures in the project), the low
b value is also found in most other cases where this wealth
type was measured (see other papers in this special section).
However, it is intriguing that Hill and Hurtado (1996: 414)
found a substantial correlation in RS for sons and their par-
ents (but not for daughters); sex-specific transmission of RS
should be explored in future studies.
Our two b measures for body weight show a substantial
degree of parent-child transmission (about 0.3 for Hadza,

This content downloaded from 142.104.240.194 on Sat, 13 Apr 2013 07:05:28 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Smith et al. Wealth Transmission and Inequality among Hunter-Gatherers
Figure 1. Parent-offspring wealth data for three representative
cases. A, Ache hunting success (b p 0.08 , embodied wealth); B,
Lamalera boat shares (b p 0.12, material wealth); C, Ju/’hoansi
exchange partners (b p 0.21, relational wealth). The line in each
graph shows the underlying linear regression on which the b
estimates are based.
This content downloaded from 142.104.240.194 on Sat, 13 Apr 2013 07:05:28 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
29
about 0.5 for Ache), the pattern also found in other popu-
lations measured in this project. Given the considerable degree
of interhousehold food sharing among Ache (Kaplan and Hill
1985) and Hadza (Sherry and Marlowe 2007) and the low b
for Ache hunting success (!0.1), the parent-child weight re-
lationship in these two populations may be substantially due
to genetic inheritance of disease resistance or some other
unmeasured variable.
In the category of material wealth, our only two measures
come from the same population, the whaling village of La-
malera, Indonesia. Household wealth exhibits moderate as-
sociation between parents and children. The index of wealth
here is based on features of household construction, im-
provements that generally require materials that must be pur-
chased with cash. However, there is very little opportunity
for wage labor in the village (aside from teaching or a few
government posts). One way for men (especially young un-
married men) to acquire money is to take occasional tem-
porary construction jobs in the district capitol. However, an-
other important source of cash may be remittances from other
close family members who have found permanent jobs outside
the village. Insofar as both parents and children have access
to the same sources of remittance money (e.g., from the same
son/brother), they may manifest similar levels of household
wealth. In this case, wealth may be as much an indicator of
social capital as of material possessions. In contrast, shares
that Lamalerans own in whaling-boat (téna) harvests do not
show a significant intergenerational elasticity, and the esti-
mated effect size is rather small (fig. 1B). This may be because
parental influence is less important than more general support
within one’s lineage for securing shares in the lineage’s téna.
Other ways of securing boat shares include seeking shares
from affinal lineages or through repeated, long-term partic-
ipation in the crew of another lineage’s boat. Parental influ-
ence is likely minimal in either case.
Finally, we have two measures of relational wealth. There
is a moderate relationship (b ≈ 0.2 ) between Ju/’hoansi par-
ents and offspring in the size of hxaro spheres (fig. 1C). This
relationship is dependent on two factors. The first is the size
and strength of spheres of hxaro that parents maintained until
old age for their children to inherit. Approximately 25% of
hxaro partnerships were passed from parents to children as
parents aged or upon their deaths (see “Wealth measures” in
“Ju/’hoansi”; also Wiessner 1986). The second factor is social
competence. Some children were competent to “replace” par-
ents who had an active social sphere; others were not. Few
children of parents with narrow hxaro spheres expanded their
spheres far beyond those of their parents (i.e., “upward mo-
bility” in hxaro partnerships was infrequent).
The highest b value for Lamalera is in food-sharing part-
nerships. Sharing ties are more common between geograph-
ically and genealogically closer households (Nolin 2008). Be-
cause parents and children share a common set of kin, they
are likely to share many of the same partners, and their total
number of partners may vary with the number of close kin
 30
in the village. The tendency for children to reside near their
parents is mild in Lamalera, but when it does occur parents
and children are likely to have sharing ties to the same res-
identially close neighbors. Even when children establish
households farther away, they may maintain sharing rela-
tionships with neighbors near their natal household. Social
relationships such as food-sharing partnerships differ from
other types of wealth in that possession by the parents is not
mutually exclusive of possession by the children. Grown chil-
dren can have established sharing relationships with the same
households as their parents. In fact, parents may be instru-
mental in helping their children establish these types of social
relationships as they enter early adulthood (Scelza, forth-
coming).
Wealth Inequality
Although our primary focus in this project is on intergen-
erational wealth transmission, we have an interest in the cor-
responding degree of wealth inequality and how this might
vary by wealth type, production system, and other factors.
Table 5 lists the Gini coefficient for each wealth type in our
sample. We use the Gini because of its wide usage, unit-free
definition, and intuitive meaning: the coefficient can range
from 0 (complete equality) to 1 (virtually all wealth held by
a single household). For comparison, Ginis of monetary in-
come range from about 0.25 in several Scandinavian countries
to more than 0.6 in some poor countries, with the United
States at about 0.41 (UNDP 2009). Most Ginis for our 11
wealth types are in the moderate range, few being less than
0.1 or greater than 0.4 (table 5); the lowest Ginis are those
for weight (both !0.1), and the highest is for Lamaleran boat
shares (0.47). There are too few measures of material and
relational wealth to discern a pattern by wealth class (but see
Smith et al. 2010).
To characterize an overall measure of wealth inequality for
the sample populations, we weight the average Gini coefficient
for each wealth class (table 5) by the average a (importance
for well-being) of that wealth class (table 4). The resulting
estimate equals 0.25, the same as the simple arithmetic average
of the Ginis in table 5.
Conclusions
What Shapes Intergenerational Wealth Transfer?
The analyses presented above reveal certain patterns regarding
wealth (broadly defined) in our sample of hunter-gatherer
populations. One is that certain types of wealth are more likely
than others to be transmitted to offspring. Of course, the
patterns we see could be spurious, given our small number
of cases. But the replication of some of these patterns across
populations, and indeed across production systems (as dis-
cussed in other papers in this special section), makes that less
likely. For example, adult body weight is highly correlated
between parents and offspring in our two cases, and similar
This content downloaded from 142.104.240.194 on Sat, 13 Apr 2013 07:05:28 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
values in nonforager populations are reported in Gurven et
al. (2010). Similarly, our two measures of relational wealth,
involving exchange partners, display moderate values (b 1
0.2) that are also echoed in most of the other populations
analyzed in this project (horticultural: Gurven et al. 2010;
agricultural: Shenk et al. 2010).
Yet similar levels of intergenerational transmission do not
imply similar causal mechanisms. Weight correlations reflect
some mix of genetic and environmental causes. With variation
in food intake effectively muted by the widespread food shar-
ing found in our populations (and most other hunter-gath-
erers), genetic variation might be free to play a larger role in
shaping adult weight. In the case of exchange partners, there
may be some relevant genetic variation (e.g., in determinants
of personality), but this likely takes a back seat to social and
demographic variables such as the number of close kin one
happens to have alive (important for at least the Ju/’hoansi
case) or the social position of one’s parents.
Some other patterns of wealth transmission are discordant
between our five populations. The transmission coefficient
for long-term hunting-return rates is quite high among the
Tsimane (b p 0.38) but close to 0 for the Ache. Since hunting
success has been found to predict RS in most hunter-gatherer
populations where the data have been analyzed, including all
six of the populations treated in this paper (reviewed in
Gurven and von Rueden 2006; Smith 2004), determining
whether the Tsimane pattern or the Ache one is more wide-
spread is of considerable interest.
As for RS itself, we treat it here (and elsewhere in this
special section) as a form of wealth, but it could justifiably
be considered an outcome of wealth transmission (or con-
sumption) as well, shaped by ecological, political economic,
and evolutionary factors. In any case, the transmission co-
efficients for our cases are quite low, matching those of most
of the RS data from other populations analyzed in this special
section. Interestingly, a recent study analyzing genetic (mi-
tochondrial DNA) data from a set of thirty-seven populations
concludes that matrilineal fertility inheritance is more fre-
quent in hunter-gatherer populations than in agricultural ones
(Blum et al. 2006). The authors speculate that in hunter-
gatherer populations, individuals belonging to large kin net-
works may benefit from stronger social support, resulting in
more offspring. This hypothesis is consistent with ethno-
graphic analyses of Ju/’hoansi by Draper and Hames (2000)
and Wiessner (2002), and it links to recent theory about the
evolutionary dynamics of cooperative breeding (Clutton-
Brock 2002; Hrdy 2005; Kokko, Johnstone, and Wright 2002).
How Egalitarian Are Hunter-Gatherers?
Hunter-gatherers have long been anthropology’s favorite ex-
emplar of whatever social, political, or moral principle an
analyst wishes to support. The twists and turns in this intel-
lectual history have been ably reviewed elsewhere (e.g., Kelly
1995; Marlowe 2005; Winterhalder 1993). We wish to avoid
Smith et al. Wealth Transmission and Inequality among Hunter-Gatherers
any suggestion of endorsing a new stereotype for what is
inherently a diverse set of societies. However, we do think
that our findings support a reassessment of the view that
hunter-gatherers (with a few obvious exceptions) are char-
acterized by pervasive equality in wealth and life chances.
The intergenerational wealth-transmission coefficients es-
timated here range from values that are very low and statis-
tically indistinguishable from 0 to ones near or above 0.4. Let
us focus on intermediate values of b ≈ 0.25, close to several
measures (table 5). While far below a perfect transmission
rate of 1.0, this measure indicates a fairly high bias in the life
chances according to the parent’s wealth. Indeed, as detailed
by Bowles, Smith, and Borgerhoff Mulder (2010), b p 0.25
implies that a child born into the top wealth decile of the
population is five times as likely to remain in the top wealth
decile as a child whose parents were in the bottom decile.
Even a b of 0.1 implies that a child born into the top wealth
decile is twice as likely to remain there as one born into the
bottom decile. These results suggest that in hunter-gatherer
populations, even those with extensive food sharing and other
leveling devices (Cashdan 1980), the offspring of those better
off will tend to remain so, and conversely.
How much wealth inequality actually exists in these pop-
ulations? The Gini coefficients listed in table 5 are low, com-
pared to those of contemporary societies and even those of
agricultural and pastoral populations (see other papers in this
special section), but they are far from negligible. Excluding
the low coefficients for weight, the Ginis range from ≈0.2 to
≈0.5, and even when weight is included the a-weighted av-
erage is 0.25 (table 5). This value is the same as the income
inequality in contemporary Denmark (0.25), the country with
lowest such value in recent years (UNDP 2009). Thus, to the
extent that our measures for this set of foragers are repre-
sentative, wealth inequality is moderate: that is to say, very
low by current world standards but far from a state of “prim-
itive communism” (cf. Lee 1988).
The combined picture from the intergenerational trans-
mission (b) and inequality (Gini) estimates suggests that we
may need to rethink the conventional portrayal of foragers
as highly egalitarian and unconcerned with wealth. Even clas-
sic examples of hunter-gatherer society display more inequal-
ity than is widely appreciated. For example, evidence indicates
that leadership was much stronger among the Ju/’hoansi in
the past, before the Bantu arrived, with the best foraging areas
(n!ore) held by strong families (Wiessner 2002), and the lan-
guage has distinct words for poor, ordinary, and rich.
What Remains to Be Done?
This research raises many more questions than it answers, a
commonplace that is emphatically true here. Because of space
limitations, we can mention only the most pressing of these.
First, we clearly need more wealth measures, particularly for
material and relational wealth classes. Given the high impor-
tance we assign to relational wealth (a ≈ 0.4 ) and the eth-
This content downloaded from 142.104.240.194 on Sat, 13 Apr 2013 07:05:28 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
31
nographic evidence of its impact on status, this wealth class
is especially in need of further detailed study and analysis.
Second, we need more work focused on the development
of institutionalized inequality in hunter-gatherers. For historic
reasons, there are no extant “complex” foraging societies of
the sort once found in places such as the Northwest Coast,
and hence we had no hope of including a representative in
this project. But the findings reported here do offer potential
insights into such societies and how they might have devel-
oped (under the right socioecological conditions) from less
hierarchical systems. In particular, we need to mine the results
of this project to address the question of what conditions
allow wealth to be monopolized. We hypothesize that there
are at least two main differences between establishing in-
equalities on the basis of social ties and doing so via material
property. First, one can successfully pass on material property
to a child who is not very bright or competent, and others
can help him or her manage the advantage, but this is gen-
erally not possible with relational wealth. Second, it is much
harder to construct institutions to transmit social ties and
knowledge than to do so for material wealth. To test these
(and related hypotheses), we will need additional data sets
detailing the degree of intergenerational wealth transmission
for various forms of wealth and the processes that support
or constrain such transmission.
Acknowledgments
We thank the Behavioral Sciences Program at Santa Fe In-
stitute for support. E. A. Smith thanks the National Science
Foundation (NSF) for funding field research among the Mer-
iam, Doug Bird and Rebecca Bliege Bird for their role as
primary researchers, and the people of Mer (particularly the
Passi family) for their generosity and assistance. K. Hill thanks
the Ache of Kue Tuvy, Arroyo Bandera, and Chupa Pou and
the assistance of Magdalena Hurtado and Fermino Chachugi.
F. W. Marlowe thanks the NSF for funding the Hadza project,
COSTECH (Tanzania Commission for Science and Technol-
ogy) for permission to conduct research, Audax Mabulla,
Daudi Peterson, and Johannes and Lene Kleppe for assistance
in Tanzania, and the Hadza. D. Nolin thanks the people of
Lamalera, the Blikololong family, Dr. Dedi Adhuri, the In-
donesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), and Michael Alvard;
research in Lamalera was supported by NSF grant BCS-
0514559. P. Wiessner thanks the Ju/’hoansi of /Kae/Kae and
Dobe for a lot of patience and help.
References Cited
Alvard, Michael S. 2002. Carcass ownership and meat distri-
bution by big-game cooperative hunters. In Social dimen-
sions in the economic process. Norbert Dannhaeuser and
Cynthia Werner, eds. Pp. 99–131. Research in Economic
Anthropology 21. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
———. 2003. Kinship, lineage, and an evolutionary per-
 32
spective on the structure of cooperative big game hunting
groups in Indonesia. Human Nature 14(2):129–163.
Alvard, Michael S., and Allen Gillespie. 2004. Good Lamalera
whale hunters accrue reproductive benefits. In Socioeco-
nomic aspects of human behavioral ecology. Michael S. Al-
vard, ed. Pp. 225–248. Research in Economic Anthropology
23. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Alvard, Michael S., and David A. Nolin. 2002. Rousseau’s
whale hunt? coordination among big-game hunters. Cur-
rent Anthropology 43(4):533–559.
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. 2005. Mortality.
In The health and welfare of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres
Strait islander peoples 2005. Pp. 147–151. Canberra: Aus-
tralian Bureau of Statistics.
Barnes, Robert H. 1986. Educated fishermen: social conse-
quences of development in an Indonesian whaling com-
munity. Bulletin de l’Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient 75:
295–314.
———. 1996. Sea hunters of Indonesia: fishers and weavers of
Lamalera. Oxford: Clarendon.
Beckett, Jeremy. 1988. Torres Strait islanders: custom and co-
lonialism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bentley, Gillian R., Tony Goldberg, and Grażyna Jasieńska.
1993. The fertility of agricultural and non-agricultural tra-
ditional societies. Population Studies 47(2):269–281.
Biesele, Megan. 1993. Women like meat: the folklore and for-
aging ideology of the Kalahari Ju/’hoan. Bloomington: In-
diana University Press.
Binford, Lewis R. 1980. Willow smoke and dogs’ tails: hunter-
gatherer settlement systems and archaeological site for-
mation. American Antiquity 45(1):4–20.
Bird, Douglas W., and Rebecca Bliege Bird. 2009. Competing
to be leaderless: food sharing and magnanimity among
Martu Aborigines. In The evolution of leadership: transitions
in decision making from small-scale to middle-range societies.
John Kantner, Kevin Vaughn, and Jelmer Eerkins, eds. Pp.
21–49. Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research.
Bliege Bird, Rebecca L., and Douglas W. Bird. 1997. Delayed
reciprocity and tolerated theft: the behavioral ecology of
food-sharing strategies. Current Anthropology 38(1):49–78.
Bliege Bird, Rebecca L., Douglas W. Bird, Eric Alden Smith,
and Geoffrey C. Kushnick. 2002. Risk and reciprocity in
Meriam food sharing. Evolution and Human Behavior
23(4):297–321.
Bliege Bird, Rebecca L., Eric Alden Smith, and Douglas W.
Bird. 2001. The hunting handicap: costly signaling in hu-
man foraging strategies. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology
50:9–19.
Blum, Michael G. B., Evelyne Heyer, Olivier François, and
Fréderic Austerlitz. 2006. Matrilineal fertility inheritance
detected in hunter-gatherer populations using the imbal-
ance of gene genealogies. PLoS Genetics 2(8):e122, doi:
10.1371/journal.pgen.0020122.
Boone, James L. 1992. Competition, conflict, and the devel-
opment of hierarchies. In Evolutionary ecology and human
This content downloaded from 142.104.240.194 on Sat, 13 Apr 2013 07:05:28 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
behavior. Eric Alden Smith and Bruce Winterhalder, eds.
Pp. 301–337. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter.
Borgerhoff Mulder, Monique, Samuel Bowles, Tom Hertz,
Adrian Bell, Jan Beise, Greg Clark, Ila Fazzio, et al. 2009.
Intergenerational transmission of wealth and the dynamics
of inequality in pre-modern societies. Science 326:682–688.
Bowles, Samuel, Eric Alden Smith, and Monique Borgerhoff
Mulder. 2010. The emergence and persistence of inequality
in premodern societies: introduction to the special section.
Current Anthropology 51(1):7–17.
Cashdan, Elizabeth A. 1980. Egalitarianism among hunters
and gatherers. American Anthropologist 82(1):116–120.
———. 1992. Spatial organization and habitat use. In Evo-
lutionary ecology and human behavior. Eric Alden Smith
and Bruce Winterhalder, eds. Pp. 237–266. Hawthorne, NY:
Aldine de Gruyter.
Clutton-Brock, Tim. 2002. Breeding together: kin selection
and mutualism in cooperative vertebrates. Science 296:
69–72.
Divale, William, Daria Khaltourina, and Andrey Korotayev.
2002. A corrected version of the Standard Cross-Cultural
Sample database. World Cultures 13(1):62–98.
Draper, Patricia, and Raymond Hames. 2000. Birth order,
sibling investment, and fertility among Ju/’hoansi (!Kung).
Human Nature 11(2):117–156.
Gurven, Michael, Wesley Allen-Arave, Kim Hill, and Mag-
dalena Hurtado. 2000. “It’s a wonderful life”: signaling gen-
erosity among the Ache of Paraguay. Evolution and Human
Behavior 21(4):263–282.
Gurven, Michael, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Paul L.
Hooper, Hillard Kaplan, Robert Quinlan, Rebecca Sear, Eric
Schniter, et al. 2010. Domestication alone does not lead to
inequality: intergenerational wealth transmission among
horticulturalists. Current Anthropology 51(1):49–64.
Gurven, Michael, and Hillard Kaplan. 2007. Longevity among
hunter-gatherers: a cross-cultural examination. Population
and Development Review 33(2):321–365.
Gurven, Michael, Hillard Kaplan, and Maguin Gutierrez.
2006. How long does it take to become a proficient hunter?
implications for the evolution of delayed growth. Journal
of Human Evolution 51(5):454–470.
Gurven, Michael, and Christopher von Rueden. 2006. Hunt-
ing, social status and biological fitness. Social Biology 53:
81–99.
Haddon, Alfred C., ed. 1901–1935. Reports of the Cambridge
Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits. 6 vols. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
———, ed. 1906. Sociology, magic, and religion of the eastern
islanders. Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Ex-
pedition to Torres Straits, vol. 6. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Hawkes, Kristen, James F. O’Connell, and Nicholas G. B.
Jones. 2001a. Hadza meat sharing. Evolution and Human
Behavior 22(2):113–142.
———. 2001b. Hunting and nuclear families: some lessons
Smith et al. Wealth Transmission and Inequality among Hunter-Gatherers
from the Hadza about men’s work. Current Anthropology
42(5):681–709.
Hiernaux, Jean, and D. Boedhi Hartono. 1980. Physical mea-
surements of the adult Hadza of Tanzania. Annals of Human
Biology 7(4):339–346.
Hill, Kim. 1994. The Ache. In South America, vol. 7 of En-
cyclopedia of World Cultures. Johannes Wilbert, ed. Pp. 3–7.
Boston: G. K. Hall-Macmillan.
———. 2002. Altruistic cooperation during foraging by the
Ache, and the evolved human predisposition to cooperate.
Human Nature 13(1):105–128.
Hill, Kim, and A. Magdalena Hurtado. 1996. Ache life history:
the ecology and demography of a foraging people. Hawthorne,
NY: Aldine de Gruyter.
———. 1999. The Ache of Paraguay. In The Cambridge en-
cyclopedia of hunters and gatherers. Richard B. Lee and Rich-
ard Daly, eds. Pp. 92–96. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Hill, Kim, and Keith Kintigh. 2009. Can anthropologists dis-
tinguish good and poor hunters? implications for hunting
hypotheses, sharing conventions, and cultural transmission.
Current Anthropology 50(3):369–377.
Howell, Nancy. 2000. Demography of the Dobe !Kung. Rev.
edition. New York: Academic Press.
Hrdy, Sarah B. 2005. Evolutionary context of human devel-
opment: the cooperative breeding model. In Attachment
and bonding: a new synthesis. C. Sue Carter, Lieselotte Ah-
ner, Klaus E. Grossmann, Sarah B. Hrdy, Michael E. Lamb,
Stephen W. Porges, and Norbert Sachser, eds. Pp. 9–32.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Jones, Nicholas B. 2006. Contemporary hunter-gatherers and
human life history evolution. In The evolution of human
life history. Kristen Hawkes and Richard R. Paine, eds. Pp.
231–266. Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research.
Jones, Nicholas B., and Frank W. Marlowe. 2002. Selection
for delayed maturity: does it take 20 years to learn to hunt
and gather? Human Nature 13(2):199–238.
Jones, Nicholas G. B., Kristen Hawkes, and James F.
O’Connell. 2002. Antiquity of postreproductive life: are
there modern impacts on hunter-gatherer postreproductive
life spans? American Journal of Human Biology 14(2):
184–205.
———. 2005. Hadza grandmothers as helpers: residence data.
In Grandmotherhood: the evolutionary significance of the sec-
ond half of female life. Eckart Voland, Athanasios Chasiotis,
and Wulf Schiefenhövel, eds. Pp. 160–176. Piscataway, NJ:
Rutgers University Press.
Kaplan, Hillard, and Kim Hill. 1985. Food sharing among
Ache foragers: tests of explanatory hypotheses. Current An-
thropology 26(2):223–246.
Kelly, Robert L. 1995. The foraging spectrum: diversity in
hunter-gatherer lifeways. Washington, DC: Smithsonian
Institution.
Kokko, Hanna, Rufus A. Johnstone, and Jonathan Wright.
2002. The evolution of parental and alloparental effort in
This content downloaded from 142.104.240.194 on Sat, 13 Apr 2013 07:05:28 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
33
cooperatively breeding groups: when should helpers pay to
stay? Behavioral Ecology 13(3):291–300.
Lee, Richard B. 1979. The !Kung San: men, women and work
in a foraging society. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
———. 1988. Reflections on primitive communism. In His-
tory, evolution and social change, vol. 1 of Hunters and gath-
erers. Tim Ingold, David Riches, and James Woodburn, eds.
Pp. 252–268. Oxford: Berg.
Lee, Richard B., and Irven DeVore, eds. 1976. Kalahari hunter-
gatherers: studies of the !Kung San and their neighbors. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Marlowe, Frank W. 1999. Showoffs or providers? the par-
enting effort of Hadza men. Evolution and Human Behavior
20(6):391–404.
———. 2000. The patriarch hypothesis: an alternative ex-
planation of menopause. Human Nature 11(1):27–42.
———. 2003. A critical period for provisioning by Hadza
men: implications for pair bonding. Evolution and Human
Behavior 24(3):217–229.
———. 2004. Marital residence among foragers. Current An-
thropology 45(2):277–284.
———. 2005. Hunter-gatherers and human evolution. Evo-
lutionary Anthropology 14(2):54–67.
———. 2006. Central place provisioning: the Hadza as an
example. In Feeding ecology in apes and other primates. Gott-
fried Hohmann, Martha M. Robbins, and Christophe
Boesch, eds. Pp. 359–377. Cambridge Studies in Biological
and Evolutionary Anthropology 48. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Marlowe, Frank W., and Julia C. Berbesque. 2009. Tubers as
fallback foods and their impact on Hadza hunter-gatherers.
American Journal of Physical Anthropology 140:751–758.
Marshall, Lorna. 1976. The !Kung of Nyae Nyae. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Murdock, George P., and Douglas R. White. 1980. Standard
Cross-Cultural Sample. In Cross-cultural samples and codes.
Herbert Barry III and Alice Schlegel, eds. Pp. 3–43. Pitts-
burgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Nolin, David. 2008. Food-sharing networks in Lamalera, In-
donesia: tests of adaptive hypotheses. PhD dissertation,
University of Washington, Seattle.
Scelza, Brooke. Forthcoming. Father’s presence speeds the
social and reproductive careers of sons. Current Anthro-
pology.
Sellen, Daniel W. 2007. Infant and young child feeding prac-
tices: evolution, recent cross cultural variation and contem-
porary public health challenges. Annual Review of Nutrition
27:123–147.
Sellen, Daniel W., and Ruth Mace. 1997. Fertility and mode
of subsistence: a phylogenetic analysis. Current Anthropol-
ogy 38(5):878–889.
Sellen, Daniel W., and Diana B. Smay. 2001. Relationship
between subsistence and age at weaning in “preindustrial
societies.” Human Nature 12(1):47–87.
 34
Sharp, Nonie. 1993. Stars of Tagai: the Torres Strait islanders.
Canberra: Aboriginal Studies.
Shenk, Mary K., Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Jan Beise, Greg-
ory Clark, William Irons, Donna Leonetti, Bobbi S. Low,
et al. 2010. Intergenerational wealth transmission among
agriculturalists: foundations of agrarian inequality. Current
Anthropology 51(1):65–83.
Sherry, Diana S., and Frank W. Marlowe. 2007. Anthropo-
metric data indicate nutritional homogeneity in Hadza for-
agers of Tanzania. American Journal of Human Biology 19:
107–118.
Shostak, Marjorie. 1981. Nisa: the life and words of a !Kung
woman. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Smith, Eric Alden. 2004. Why do good hunters have higher
reproductive success? Human Nature 15(4):343–364.
Smith, Eric Alden, and Rebecca L. Bliege Bird. 2000. Turtle
hunting and tombstone opening: public generosity as costly
signaling. Evolution and Human Behavior 21(4):245–261.
Smith, Eric Alden, Rebecca L. Bliege Bird, and Douglas W.
Bird. 2003. The benefits of costly signaling: Meriam turtle
hunters. Behavioral Ecology 14(1):116–126.
Smith, Eric Alden, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Samuel
Bowles, Michael Gurven, Tom Hertz, and Mary K. Shenk.
2010. Production systems, inheritance, and inequality in
premodern societies: conclusions. Current Anthropology
51(1):85–94.
Smith, Eric Alden, and Jung-Kyoo Choi. 2007. The emergence
of inequality in small-scale societies: simple scenarios and
agent-based simulations. In The model-based archaeology of
socionatural systems. Timothy A. Kohler and Sander E. van
der Leeuw, eds. Pp. 105–119, 241–244. Santa Fe, NM:
School for Advanced Research.
UNDP. 2009. Human Development Report 2009. http://
This content downloaded from 142.104.240.194 on Sat, 13 Apr 2013 07:05:28 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
hdrstats.undp.org/en/indicators/161.html (accessed No-
vember 29, 2009).
Wiessner, Polly. 1981. Measuring the impact of social ties on
nutritional status among the !Kung San. Social Science In-
formation 20(4–5):641–678.
———. 1982. Risk, reciprocity, and social influence on !Kung
San economics. In Politics and history in band societies.
Eleanor Leacock and Richard Lee, eds. Pp. 61–84. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 1986. !Kung San networks in a generational per-
spective. In The past and future of !Kung ethnography: crit-
ical reflections and symbolic perspectives. Essays in honor of
Lorna Marshall. Megan Biesele, Robert Gordon, and Rich-
ard Lee, eds. Pp. 103–136. Hamburg: Helmut Buske.
———. 2002. Hunting, healing, and hxaro exchange: a long-
term perspective on !Kung (Ju/’hoansi) large-game hunt-
ing. Evolution and Human Behavior 23(6):407–436.
———. 2005. Norm enforcement among the Ju/’hoansi
Bushmen: a case of strong reciprocity? Human Nature
16(2):115–145.
Wilmsen, Edwin N. 1989. Land filled with flies: a political
economy of the Kalahari. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Winterhalder, Bruce. 1993. Work, resources, and population
in foraging societies. Man, n.s., 28(2):321–340.
Woodburn, James. 1964. The social organization of the Hadza
of North Tanganyika. PhD dissertation, University of
Cambridge.
———. 1982. Egalitarian societies. Man, n.s., 17(3):431–451.
———. 1998. Sharing is not a form of exchange: an analysis
of property-sharing in immediate-return hunter-gatherer
societies. In Property relations: renewing the anthropological
tradition. C. M. Hann, ed. Pp. 48–63. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press.
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010 35

Intergenerational Wealth Transmission and

Inequality in Premodern Societies

Pastoralism and Wealth Inequality

Revisiting an Old Question

by Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Ila Fazzio, William Irons,

Richard L. McElreath, Samuel Bowles, Adrian Bell,
Tom Hertz, and Leela Hazzah

CA⫹ Online-Only Supplement: Estimating the Inheritance of Wealth in Premodern Societies

Pastoralist societies are often portrayed as economically egalitarian, reflecting the volatile nature of
livestock herds and the existence of multiple institutions that allow for the redistribution of wealth
as a form of insurance. Motivated by an interest in the role of intergenerational transmission in
structuring persistent inequality, we examine the extent of intergenerational transmission of material
wealth (four measures) and embodied wealth (one measure) for four pastoral populations from
different parts of the world (East Africa, West Africa, and southwest Asia). We find substantial levels
of intergenerational transmission and marked economic inequality. We argue that the high corre-
spondence between the material wealth of parents and offspring reflects the importance of the family
in the transmission of wealth through bequests, positive assortment by wealth in the domains of
marriage and herd management, and positive returns to scale as might occur when raising or
defending large herds. We conclude that the analysis of intergenerational transmission provides new
insights into the much-debated extent of egalitarianism among pastoralists.

Pastoralism and Intergenerational Wealth Transmission
This paper examines the nature, distribution, and intergen-
erational transmission of wealth in pastoral societies. Despite
the difficulties in working with mobile populations and the
complexities in quantifying livestock holdings, researchers
Monique Borgerhoff Mulder is Professor in the Department of
Anthropology and the Graduate Group in Ecology at the University
of California, Davis (Davis, California 95616-8522, U.S.A.
[mborgerhoffmulder@ucdavis.edu]). Ila Fazzio is Research Assis-
tant at the Centre for Economic Performance of the London School
of Economics (10 Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, United
Kingdom). William Irons is Professor in the Department of An-
thropology, Northwestern University, (1810 Hinman Avenue, Room
A54B, Evanston, Illinois 60208, U.S.A.). Richard L. McElreath is
Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and member
of the Graduate Group at the University of California, Davis (Davis,
California 95616, U.S.A.). Samuel Bowles is Research Professor
and Director of the Behavioral Sciences Program at the Santa Fe
Institute (1399 Hyde Park Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501,
U.S.A.) and Professor of Economics at the University of Siena.
find that pastoralists offer a relatively straightforward oppor-
tunity for investigating the role of material wealth in struc-
turing inequality. We focus primarily on the distribution of
material wealth and the extent to which such livestock hold-
ings are correlated between generations, with a focus on four
populations for which we have relevant data. Our four pop-
ulations represent the pastoralism typical of East Africa (Da-
toga, Sangu), West Africa (Juhaina Arabs), and southwest Asia
(Yomut Turkmen). We use the results to assess the idea that
material wealth is particularly amenable to intergenerational
transmission and to evaluate claims concerning egalitarianism
among pastoralists. With a sample of only four populations,
Adrian Bell is a doctoral student in the Graduate Group in Ecology
at the University of California, Davis (Davis, California 95616,
U.S.A.). Tom Hertz is Visiting Professor of Economics at the In-
ternational University College of Turin (Piazza Carlo Felice 18,
10121, Torino, Italy). Leela Hazzah is a doctoral student at the
Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies of the University of Wis-
consin (Madison, Wisconsin 53706, U.S.A.). This paper was sub-
mitted 1 V 09 and accepted 21 VII 09.

䉷 2010 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2010/5101-0005$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/648561

This content downloaded on Tue, 19 Feb 2013 13:24:56 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 36
we focus less on the differences between populations and more
on the intriguing parallels and what these mean for our un-
derstanding of the dynamics of wealth inequality in pastoral
populations (Borgerhoff Mulder et al. 2009).
Pastoral Production System: Definition, Origins,
Typical Features, and Variability
The pastoralist production system is defined by a heavy but
rarely exclusive reliance on herding domesticated animals for
subsistence and marketable products (modern ranchers with
their exclusive commercial focus are omitted from discus-
sion). The most common domesticates are cattle, camels,
sheep, goats, horses, yaks, llamas, and reindeer. The material
tool kit is often highly portable, and there is a rich and com-
plex fund of knowledge pertaining to the health, behavior,
and productivity of domesticated species. In addition to har-
vesting milk and meat, pastoralists utilize products such as
horn, skin, wool, tendons, bone, and urine and employ spe-
cific technologies such as the preserving of milk or the har-
nessing of cartage animals. Pastoralists’ diets are universally
supplemented (at least seasonally) with grain, either from
trade or cultivation, or with other foraged foods. Mobility,
either permanent (nomadism) or seasonal (transhumance),
is common. Domestic livestock appeared independently
(10,000–8000 BP) at three main centers (Bruford, Bradley,
and Luikart 2003), and this appearance represents a robust
adaptation to living in grasslands or cold or arid regions where
agriculture is marginal or impossible.
Traditional pastoral production is a family-based enterprise
(commercial ranchers are excluded from discussion here),
often complemented with the labor of other families, espe-
cially those who are poor in livestock, and fostered children.
Core family production generates some production-system-
specific demographic and sociocultural correlates (table 1).
High fertility is generally desired, but levels are usually lower
than those of agriculturalists (Bentley, Jasienska, and Goldberg
1993; Sellen and Mace 1997) and variable, reflecting multiple
factors—mobility, pathogens, maternal workloads, unpre-
dictable child mortality, delayed and/or unstable marriages,
and the extended absence of men (Galvin et al. 1988; Hewlett
1991; Leslie and Winterhalder 2002; Randall 1994). Pastoralist
systems are commonly organized into patrilineal clans and
lineages (54% of the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample [SCCS]
sample is patrilineal) that function as corporate livestock-
owning units, as in the family-owned stock of Inner Mongolia
(Sneath 2000). Men are typically the primary owners of live-
stock wealth (with exceptions such as the Navaho; Kluckhohn
and Leighton 1974). There is a sexual division of labor, al-
though women spend considerable time in livestock-related
tasks (Fratkin 1989). Polygyny is predominant (in 60% of the
SCCS, either !20% (limited) or 120% (general) of men marry
polygynously); in Africa at least, polygynous marriage is pos-
itively associated with pastoral specialization (Spencer 1998).
Men accumulate wives, children, and labor at their homes
This content downloaded on Tue, 19 Feb 2013 13:24:56 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
(87% of SCCS has either patrilocal or virilocal postmarital
residence) through payments (71% of the SCCS have either
token or substantive bride-price or bride-service), and stock
are parceled out among polygynously married wives for use
and inheritance following what in Africa is known as the
“house property” complex (Gluckman 1950). As classified in
the SCCS, pastoralists are either egalitarian (19%) or have
one (50%), two (25%), or three (6%) social strata (which
include forms of hereditary slavery where specific castes or
ethnicities live and work in pastoral households without own-
ing livestock). Famously, pastoralists often exhibit a strong
cultural ethos of valor and physical prowess (91% of the SCCS
populations have an ideology of “male toughness”), in some
groups exemplified by special institutions for warriorhood,
often embodied in age-set systems and associated geronto-
cratic institutions. While data from cross-cultural databases
suffer from various degrees of reliability a general pattern
emerges from descriptive data such as these.
Pastoralist societies are highly variable. Early typologies em-
phasize the purity of pastoralism (with respect to reliance on
nonpastoral foods), nomadism, and aversion to commercial
production (Jacobs 1965). Later overviews explore the di-
mensions of variation, such as specialized versus diversified
production (Salzman 1971), autonomy or articulation with
neighboring populations (e.g., Galaty and Johnson 1990), and
the range of relationships between property and power (Rigby
1985). Most fundamentally differences can be seen between
the (until recently) autonomously organized pastoralists of
East and southern Africa (now tolerated as somewhat fringe
pursuits within a typically underdeveloped livestock sector)
and the erstwhile nomadic empires, which are most typical
of the Asian Steppe (e.g., Kradin 2002) but which occur at
smaller scales in North and West Africa (Stenning 1959) and
the Near and Middle East (Barth 1961). Factors underlying
such differences are ultimately ecological (Richerson, Bor-
gerhoff Mulder, and Vila 1996). Where pastoralists develop
trade interdependencies with cultivators (exchanging animal
goods and caravan products for grain and services), the sym-
biosis can lead to their becoming almost indistinguishable
economically and demographically from settled neighbors
(who may even include erstwhile sectors of the pastoralist
group).
A final salient feature of most pastoralist groups is the
susceptibility of their households to catastrophic loss from
disease, drought, and raids (Barth 1964; Bradburd 1982; Dahl
and Hjort 1976; Sandford 1983). The impact of such events
can be huge, causing at least a temporary shuffling in wealth
differences among households, and is commented on by most
ethnographers. Although comparative figures are unavailable,
the magnitude of such shocks is probably larger for pastor-
alists than for agriculturists because of the vulnerability of
their “wealth on the hoof” to epidemics and theft. Whether
such losses, or the impacts of such losses, are stochastic with
respect to wealth differentials is addressed later.
Borgerhoff Mulder et al. Pastoralism and Wealth Inequality 37

Table 1. Geographic, stratification, and inheritance characteristics of pas-

toral societies (defined by “pastoral contributes most” under the subsis-
tence economy variable) from the 186 societies comprising the Standard
Cross-Cultural Sample

Characteristic % of n societies (n)

Region (v843):
Africa 18.6 (16)
Circum-Mediterranean 24.8 (16)
East Eurasia 37.2 (16)
Insular Pacific 0 (16)
North America 0 (16)
South America 6.2 (16)
Descent (v247):
Patrilineal 53.5 (15)
Duolateral/bilineal 6.7 (15)
Matrilineal 13.3 (15)
Bilateral 13.3 (15)
Mixed 13.3 (15)
Polygamy (v861):
Polyandry 6.7 (15)
Monogamy prescribed 20.0 (15)
Monogamy preferred 13.3 (15)
Limited polygyny 26.7 (15)
Full polygyny 33.3 (15)
Marital residence (v215):
Avunculocal 6.2 (16)
Optional 6.2 (16)
Virilocal 12.5 (16)
Patrilocal 75.0 (16)
Bridewealth (v1195):
Dowry 14.3 (16)
No exchange 14.3 (16)
Gift exchange/token bridewealth 14.3 (16)
Bride-price or bride-service 57.1 (16)
Social stratification (v158):
Egalitarian 18.8 (16)
Hereditary slavery 50.0 (16)
Two social classes, castes/slavery 25.0 (16)
Three social classes or castes, with or without slavery 6.2 (16)
Ideology of male toughness (v664):
Absent 9.1 (11)
Present 90.9 (11)
Inheritance of moveable property (v279):
Matrilineal 6.7 (15)
Children, with daughters receiving less 20.0 (15)
Children equally for both sexes 6.7 (15)
Patrilineal 66.7 (15)
Inheritance distribution of moveable property (v281):
Equal of relatively equal 80.0 (15)
Ultimogeniture 6.7 (15)
Primogeniture 13.3 (15)

Wealth
Classes: material, relational, and embodied. Livestock are the
principal form of material wealth among pastoralists, serving
as the fundamental form of family capital (the English word
“cattle” is the root of the word “capital”) and identity. For
the West African Fulani, for instance, it is cattle that allow a
man to be free and independent, to achieve personal goals,
and to generate wealth (Grayzel 1990); for the East African
Maasai, Waller (1999: 24) surmises that a “very poor Maasai
must be either an ex-Maasai or a dead Maasai.”
Contrary to an early belief that herders cumulate livestock
for no sound economic reason (an irrational “cattle complex”;
Herskovits 1926), pastoralists are repeatedly shown to manage
their herds in a highly efficient way, that is, managing not for
short-term returns but longer-term prosperity, trading off

This content downloaded on Tue, 19 Feb 2013 13:24:56 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 38
meat today for milk tomorrow, consumption benefits now
for the children and labor of wives (acquired through bride-
wealth) in the future. They also show an opportunism (Dahl
and Hjort 1976; Homewood and Rogers 1991; Sandford 1983)
well adapted to environments characterized by disequilibrial
dynamics (Ellis and Swift 1988). Large herds serve as buffers
against disasters, as base capital for maximizing herd growth
and milk production, and as capital for payments for wives.
While livestock also serve as prestige items whose exchange
signals multiple social messages (Harrell 1997) and whose
strategic use attracts large followings of loyal allies (Harrell
1997; Koptyoff and Miers 1977), this does not detract from
their crucial role in ensuring subsistence (Dyson-Hudson and
Dyson-Hudson 1980; Schneider 1979). For all pastoralists, then,
herds serve as a critical reservoir for investment in the future;
additional material stores of value include jewelry, gold, carpets,
saddles, tents, and, in recent years, consumer goods.
Successful herd management involves relational as well as
material capital. Livestock need water, pasture, and labor. Se-
cure access to such ephemeral resources requires the estab-
lishment and maintenance of supportive social relationships
within and beyond the community, whether in East Africa
(Fratkin, Roth, and Galvin 1994), the Hindu Kush (Balikçi
1990), or the Middle East (Barth 1961). These relationships
are serviced through exchanges of stock, gifts of coffee and
tobacco, and sexual access to wives, and they create social ties
that contribute also to labor and defense (Dyson-Hudson and
Dyson-Hudson 1980). In an unusually well-quantified study
of how pastoralists cope with drought, Bollig (2006) shows
for the Kenyan Pokot how richer households provide meat
for poorer households largely through their contributions to
communal ritually focused feasts. Such families are not repaid
in subsequent years and could better ensure their food security
through selling goats for maize, suggesting that their gener-
osity builds “symbolic capital” (Bollig 2006: 186) rather than
simple risk reduction. For the neighboring Turkana, Johnson
(1999) concludes that social networks that distribute food,
livestock, and other sources of support are as important to a
herder’s success as having a wealthy father, and in Dassane-
tech, senior elders “go to dimi” (a ceremonial liquidation of
their material holdings by giving away all their animals to
bond partners; Almagor 1978), symbolizing the predomi-
nance of relational capital. In other parts of the world, Andean
llama herders use reciprocal exchanges to increase the size of
their herds (Orlove 1981), and in Central Asia it is the lack
of redistributive mechanisms that may render Basseri families
so vulnerable to dropping out of pastoralism (Bradburd
1989). Finally, for the Norwegian Saami, new data show that
broad (districtwide) networks of labor are more important
than household labor in enhancing reindeer reproductive
rates and carcass body mass (Naess, Fauchald, and Tveraa
2009). In short, relational wealth is almost universally ac-
knowledged by ethnographers who emphasize herd owners’
concern with reputations as generous and reliable allies and
access to labor.
This content downloaded on Tue, 19 Feb 2013 13:24:56 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
Embodied wealth, which includes both physical and
knowledge-based capital (see “embodied capital,” Kaplan
1996), is also important in pastoralist populations. Physical
condition, performance, and competition are highly valued
in the harsh environmental conditions in which pastoralists
live, evidenced in the value placed on masculinity, strength,
and women’s and men’s beauty (Sandford 1983). Fertility is
also deemed crucial to status, wealth, and the supply of house-
hold labor. Detailed research with the Turkana of the arid
savannas of Kenya reveals the susceptibility of pastoralists to
both seasonal and chronic food shortages (Galvin et al. 1988;
Little and Leslie 1999) and the role of household members
in supporting one another through periods of ill health.
Knowledge of the conditions for successful pastoral produc-
tion, grazing ecology, weather patterns, migration routes, and
the social and political landscape is also critical, although often
this information is widely available or accrued through re-
lational wealth, which itself may depend on material wealth.
Thus, in Afghanistan only rich shepherds can entertain vis-
itors and obtain the rapidly changing information on eco-
nomic and security conditions (Balikçi 1990). Intangible
property and ritual knowledge, like chant-songs and prayer
sticks for the Navaho (Kluckhohn and Leighton 1974) are
also very important.
Clearly material, relational and embodied wealth intersect.
Herders world over with large livestock holdings can marry
multiple wives, produce numerous healthy children, enjoy a
large pool of labor to enhance livestock productivity, thereby
obtaining status for their families and attracting dependents
and political allies who provide critical knowledge on trade,
grazing, security, and the connections needed for further suc-
cess. The implications of such potential economies of scale
or synergies among wealth types are revisited in Smith et al.
(2010, in this issue).
Intergenerational transmission. Among pastoralists, flows of
goods and services are constrained primarily by kin, although
raiding or other feats of valor can also be important, especially
for raising bride payments. In the SCCS, 67% of the societies
show patrilineal inheritance of movable property. Among the
inheritors, distributions are relatively equal for 80% of the
sample (table 1), though a ruthless meritocracy (informal
favoring gifted or energetic sons) is often in evidence. There
are many variants in the details, for example, how the sons
of cowives are treated, birth order biases, procedures in the
case of a patriarch’s premature death, the role of the deceased’s
younger brothers in the inheritance process, the timing of
transfers, how conflicts are resolved, and daughters’ gifts, top-
ics to which anthropologists have given much attention. Ma-
trilineal cases like the Sahelian Tuareg or the southern African
Himba, where men pass wealth to sister’s sons, stand out as
unusual. Daughters generally receive little material wealth,
leaving home at marriage with only their jewelry and clothes,
a severance from the family herd portrayed dramatically in
the custom of bride capture (Borgerhoff Mulder 1991). In
high-latitude groups, like the Koryak of northern Russia, it
Borgerhoff Mulder et al. Pastoralism and Wealth Inequality
is customary for the reindeer herds to be divided equally
between sons and daughters (Ingold 1980).
At one level these mechanisms of intergenerational trans-
mission (gifts, bequests, and inheritance rules) are easy to
study—they have different names, are transferred at different
stages of the life span, and are imbued with either special
ritual or jural status (Gray and Gulliver 1964). But in the real
world, the culturally proscribed inheritance process is rife with
conflict. A vivid example is Goldschmidt’s (1969) account of
the political intrigue that occurred at the death of a Kenyan
Sebei patriarch, dynamics that enmesh even the most promi-
nent of Africans (Obama 2004). Actual patterns of transmission
often depart from normative expectations and are rarely doc-
umented in ethnographies, with the exception of Irons’s (1994)
study of patrimony in the Turkmen. For this reason we focus
here on the extent to which livestock wealth (or in the Turkmen
case, patrimony) in one generation is correlated with that in
the next rather than on bequests per se.
Samples and Methods
Overview of Sample Populations
A pastoralist way of life can guarantee autonomy for a local
group or be pursued as a regional economic specialization.
Our four populations encompass both types. Whereas the
Tanzanian Sangu and Yomut Turkmen represent pastoral spe-
cializations within a larger economically diverse ethnic group,
the Tanzanian Datoga and Chadian Juhaina Arabs are auton-
omous groups. On other grounds we cannot claim these four
populations represent the range of pastoralist specializations
or their geographic range (table 1).
Datoga
Ethnographic background. The Datoga (population estimated
between 62,300 and 81,900) were displaced from the fertile
highlands of northern Tanzania in the sixteenth to eighteenth
centuries and have since migrated across the plains adjacent
to Lake Eyasi and beyond. Datoga herd cattle, goats, and
sheep, driving their animals to seasonally available pastures
while maintaining relatively permanent homestead sites. Their
sociocultural characteristics are typical of East African pas-
toralists—polygynous marriage and patrilineal inheritance,
with patrilocal homesteads clustered into loose neighbor-
hoods (Sellen, Borgerhoff Mulder, and Sieff 2000). Livestock
are central to Datoga life, with their products consumed as
food, used for household maintenance, and sold to generate
cash for the purchase of maize, cloth, jewelry, medicines, and
honey. Livestock are also exchanged generously in informal
networks and slaughtered with abandon at widely attended
memorial feasts for deceased elders as a demonstration of
family status. Livestock are the only form of accumulated
wealth in this population and are primarily owned by men.
Datoga attempt to cultivate small millet and maize fields but
are generally unproductive farmers (Sieff 1997). The data pre-
This content downloaded on Tue, 19 Feb 2013 13:24:56 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
39
sented here come from three field seasons (1987–1989) in
eight different neighborhoods during a period when Datoga
were experiencing considerable economic stress. Most families
were selling off cattle for grain and veterinary medicines, and
the poorer households (a majority) were caught in a declining
cycle of poverty (Sieff 1999). Outcomes for health, growth,
and nutrition were often severe (Sellen 1999).
Wealth measures and methods. Two measures of wealth are
used for this population—livestock wealth and reproductive
success. The measure of material wealth focuses on multispecies
livestock holdings (reported in Tropical Livestock Units weight
equivalents; Sieff 1999) that were censused over one, two, or
three surveys and averaged. For sons’ wealth, a count was made
of the stock in the appropriate categories to which married
sons have rights, as specified by traditional terms; similarly,
wealth of daughters was calculated on the basis of the daughter’s
dowry cattle together with the animals given to her (with user
rights) by her husband (Borgerhoff Mulder 1991; Klima 1964;
Tomikawa 1978). Pairing was focused on fathers (i.e., father-
son and father-daughter links); the mother’s wealth was not
analyzed, being difficult to differentiate from that of her hus-
band as her children grow up and leave. Analyses are based on
95 father-son dyads and 40 father-daughter dyads, the differ-
ence in sample size reflecting the outmigration of daughters
with patrilocal postmarital residence.
Reproductive success (RS) is used as a measure of embodied
wealth. As with other pastoralists, fertility is highly valued,
but raising children in this environment is not easy. Datoga
in Eyasi exhibit poor achievements in child growth (Sellen
1999) and high levels of fertility and child mortality (Bor-
gerhoff Mulder 1992). For these analyses we use the number
of children surviving to 5 years, corrected for the child’s prob-
ability of surviving to their fifth birthday (.67 boys and .71
girls; Borgerhoff Mulder 1992). As with livestock pairings,
analyses focus on father-son and father-daughter links. De-
scriptive statistics for paired individuals were compared with
the fuller sample reported in Borgerhoff Mulder 1992 and
suggest no sample bias. Both livestock wealth and RS were
controlled for age, determined through the use of a locally
constructed calendar.
Juhaina Arabs
Ethnographic background. Juhaina Arabs (approximately
18,000) are a population of transhumant pastoralists originally
from Yemen and Saudi Arabia who arrived in Chad in the
fifteenth century. Juhaina families live in camps of 4–15 tents
and migrate together, covering distances of 250–600 km along
the north-south axis. Travel corridors are selected on the basis
of the distribution of better pastures, the availability of water,
and proximity to markets where they raise cash by selling
milk. Strong competition for water resources and livestock
incursions into cultivated areas often trigger violent conflicts
between pastoralist and farming communities. Juhaina are
predominantly camel herders, but they also keep goats and
 40
sheep. Camels are their repository of wealth. Female camels
are crucial for reproduction and milk production; males are
kept for transport. The Juhaina Arabs are a patrilocal and
patrilineal society, and families are the principal corporate
livestock holding units. Most of the transmission of livestock
from father to son occurs while the father is still alive, with
sons gradually obtaining rights over these animals as they get
married and start having children. Until a man’s marriage,
or a few years subsequently, his cattle stay together with his
father’s herd. Social and economic networks rarely exist out-
side male kin lines, and loans are rare, with preference given
to brothers, paternal uncles, and cousins. These paternal kin
are those most likely to help in raising the bride-price. Live-
stock are partially protected against loss by being distributed
among homes of cowives, and less commonly in-laws. Women
have very limited effective control over the resources, despite
formal rights under Islamic law. All data were collected during
two dry-season field expeditions at 26 Juhaina camps in the
Chari-Baguirmi district.
Wealth measures and methods. A single measure of material
wealth is used for the Juhaina—the amount of milk collected
from camels. This was preferable to asking awkward questions
about exact numbers of livestock owned. Milk collected/day
is a good indicator of the number of female camels owned
by a family, especially during the dry season (when these data
were collected); this is because Juhaina herders are highly
engaged in the milk-selling market and seek to maximize milk
collection (Fazzio 2008). Milk produced was recorded in koros
(2-L bowls). Analyses were based on 5 women and 16 men,
all alive and older than 21 years of age; these individuals were
linked to 12 fathers. From this data set, paired wealth mea-
sures were available for 21 father-offspring pairs (16 father-
son, 5 father-daughter). Analyses were controlled for age,
which was determined using local calendars and some im-
portant historical events.
Sangu
Ethnographic background. Sangu are the principal ethnic group
in the Usangu Plains of western Tanzania. They originate from
a mixture of Bantu peoples present in the late 1800s, when
they united under a hereditary chief and began raiding their
neighbors for livestock and taking slaves (Shorter 1972). At
the peak of their power they were wealthy cattle pastoralists
who wielded considerable military might. Today they are
farmers, although 100 families in the villages around Ukwa-
heri still keep herds on the plains and practice transhumance,
and these are the focus of this study. Pastoralist Sangu live
in small patrilineally focused clan-based communities. House-
hold compounds consist of extended families. Livestock are
important for subsistence and bride payments. Kin often loan
and borrow sections of their herds as an intentional risk-
avoidance strategy. Cattle, as well as sheep and goats, are
controlled by the head of household, while inheritance rights
are assigned to wives following the house-property complex
This content downloaded on Tue, 19 Feb 2013 13:24:56 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
whereby wives are entirely responsible for the animals assigned
to their section of the herd. When sons marry, their initial
herds come from a portion of a mother’s share of the live-
stock. In addition to livestock, every household farms at least
1 acre of corn (McElreath 2004), but low rainfall renders a
very low yield compared with that of Sangu agriculturalists
in the more southern zone. The data here come from three
field seasons from 1997 through 2000, in the pastoral regions
of Usangu.
Wealth measures and methods. Material wealth among
Sangu pastoralists is best measured by livestock herds that
grow at a vastly superior rate to money in the bank. Sangu
themselves use cattle head as the most prominent measure of
status and success. The measures used here come from surveys
and owner self-report, as well as verbal reports from neighbors
to check for consistency. In a minority of cases, surveys dis-
agreed with self-report and/or neighbor reports. These cases
were readily resolved by pointing out the discrepancies to
owner and neighbors. Herd sizes can fluctuate from year to
year, such that single-year estimates will contribute noise to
the attempt to estimate long-term livestock holdings and thus
lower estimates of intergenerational transmission. The data
presented here focus only on male ownership, as this is the
easiest to measure reliably, and includes cattle that have been
assigned to wives for later inheritance by male heirs. Data are
available on 108 father-son pairs.
Yomut
Ethnographic background. The Yomut (100,000 in Iran) are a
relatively prosperous and large Turkmen descent group oc-
cupying an area of what is now the Islamic Republic of Turk-
menistan and adjacent areas of Iran and Afghanistan. They
are a largely endogamous population. The Yomut of the Gor-
gan Plain consciously divide themselves into two groups, the
Chomur (see Shenk et al. 2010, in this issue) and the Charwa.
Charwa are primarily pastoral, raising sheep, goats, and
horses, although they cultivate a little for cash and subsistence
and weave carpets. After sedentarization during the 1930s,
Charwa returned to full time migratory existence beginning
with the Soviet occupation of northern Iran in 1941 (Irons
2002). They enjoy extensive networks with Yomut traders who
live in towns. Politically, like most pastoralists, they are aceph-
alous (with no socially distinct social strata, unlike Bakhtiari,
Qashqai, and Komachi; Irons 1994); their defense is based on
a segmentary lineage system. Charwa Yomut live in joint fam-
ilies consisting of parents, unmarried children, and married
adult sons. Both land and livestock pass from father to son
as a patrimony (primarily consisting of sheep and goats) at
the time of household division. This takes place either at the
death of the father or when the son’s children are nearing
the age of marriage. Fathers try to give equal patrimonies to
their sons, after which there are no further distributions. Po-
lygny is very limited because of the cost of bridewealth, and
dowries given to daughters are trivial in value. The data used
Borgerhoff Mulder et al. Pastoralism and Wealth Inequality
here were gathered over three field trips between 1965 and
1974 in a random stratified sample of households designed
to detect variation in demographic parameters within the Yo-
mut population.
Wealth measures and methods. A single measure of wealth
is used in this population—the size of the patrimony (Irons
1994) converted into its contemporary monetary value. In
1973–1974, each household head was asked about his patri-
mony when he became an independent household head and
also about the patrimonies that he had given sons who had
already separated from the household. Age was not controlled
in this analysis, but most patrimonies are transferred when
the son is between 30 and 40 years old. Data are available on
22 father-son pairs.
Results and Population-Specific
Discussion
The importance of the different classes of wealth to pastoral
production is presented in table 2. To obtain these measures,
authors used their ethnographic knowledge of the population
they studied to provide judgments of the percentage difference
in household well-being associated with a 1% change in a
given wealth class, effectively a Cobb-Douglas production
function of household well-being. Although we are all un-
doubtedly commonly influenced by the broader pastoral lit-
erature, these judgments were made independently, yet they
yielded a very consistent pattern. In fact, our a estimates for
material wealth are very similar to one subsequently calculated
from production functions given by Massell (1963) for the
Nyaturu agropastoralists of central Tanzania (see also Ber-
hanu, Colman, and Fayiss 2007 for the Ethiopian Borana).
Material wealth is of major significance to pastoralist well-
being (average a p 0.61), consistent with a whole body of
ethnographic evidence outlined above. Embodied wealth is
thought to be less than half as important (a p 0.26), and
relational wealth half as important again (a p 0.14). Regard-
ing embodied wealth, it is likely, as noted in the introduction,
that although health and fitness are important to well-being,
strong family systems support those who are ill or injured,
such that they can live normal, even reasonably successful
lives. Relational wealth was deemed relatively unimportant
(0.10) in the Sangu, Yomut and Juhaina, apart from the Da-
toga, where it was thought to be important (a p 0.25) in
assuring protection against local outbreaks of disease and,
more importantly, cattle raids. In each of these populations,
formal livestock-loaning networks are rare or nonexistent;
where loaning, assistance, and exchanges occur, this is mainly
among patrilineal kin. Note that a values are not statistical
estimates but subjective judgments of researchers based on
many months or years of fieldwork.
Our estimates of intergenerational transmission are cap-
tured with a unit-free regression coefficient b (table 3; fig. 1).
The pattern is very consistent, with high transmission coef-
ficients between parental and offspring wealth ranging be-
This content downloaded on Tue, 19 Feb 2013 13:24:56 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
41
Table 2. a exponents for the three classes of wealth for pas-
toral populations (see text for further explanation)
Population Embodied Material Relational
Datoga .25 .5 .25
Juhaina Arabs .28 .62 .10
Sangu (Ukwaheri) .30 .60 .10
Yomut Charwa .20 .70 .10
Averages .26 .61 .14
tween b p 0.535 and 0.957, all statistically significantly dif-
ferent from a coefficient of 0. The average material-wealth b
is 0.67 (SE 0.07). Weighting the material, embodied, and re-
lational b’s by their importance to wellbeing (a) produces an
overall weighted b for pastoralists of 0.43 (SE 0.06), using the
b for Kipsigis cattle partners (see Shenk et al. 2010) for the
missing relational-wealth measure.
For Datoga sons, the principal wealth transmission mech-
anism is the bequest. Sons receive most of their livestock
directly from their fathers or other paternal relatives. How-
ever, the size of the son’s herd also reflects the growth of his
herd (subsequent to the initial gifts or transfers). This growth
factor is not independent of the growth of the father’s herd,
because of shared exposure to disease and raiding, common
access to preferred pastures, and quality of husbandry. It
should also be noted that these results focus on the traditional
pastoral sector of the Eyasi Datoga; families without cattle
who are dropping out of pastoralism (Sieff 1999) are excluded.
Juhaina Arabs also receive most of their animals from fa-
thers and paternal relatives, primarily during their fathers’
lives—at birth, circumcision, and marriage. Since sons often
continue to camp with their father after establishing inde-
pendent households, the growth in a son’s herd is not in-
dependent of that of his father’s herd. The b may be slightly
underestimated for this population, reflecting measurement
error arising from using milk collected from female camels
as an indicator of total camel ownership.
Sangu sons similarly receive most of their initial livestock
from fathers. Herds subsequently grow with natural increase
and bride payments and decline with disease, theft, starvation,
sale, and mismanagement. As in other groups, these factors
are not independent among fathers and sons because of com-
mon environment. A major factor driving wealth accumu-
lation in the Sangu may be the size of patrilineal kin groups.
The very high b is driven by two major outliers (although
even after deleting these two outliers, bootstrap standard er-
rors show a nonzero elasticity remains). These two men have
managed to retain such large herds, relative to other Sangu,
perhaps because they are both members of a successful cohort
of half-brothers who have supported one another in defense,
management, and loans. Thus these kin are buffered against
the stochastic effects that lead to herd loss. This notion is
supported by other data showing that Sangu herders say they
value kin much more than do Sangu farmers (McElreath
 42 Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010

Table 3. Wealth transmission and inequality measures for pastoral populations

b transmission Gini coefficient

Population Wealth type (N pairs) Wealth classa coefficient (SE) P valueb (SE)c

Datoga Livestock (135) M .622 (.127) .000 .386 (.037)

Juhaina Arabs Camelsd (21) M .535 (.226) .018 .346 (.037)
Sangu (Ukwaheri) Cattle (108) M .957 (.424) .024 .694 (.052)
Yomut (Charwa) Patrimony (livestock) (22) M .564 (.167) .001 .599 (.042)
Average (first four rows) .67 (.07) .000 .51 (.06)
Datoga RS (133) E .066 (.060) .274 .200 (.018)
Kipsigise Cattle partners (102) R .041 (.139) .767 .446 (.021)

Note. Sex-specific b estimates for livestock can be made for the Datoga (daughters, 0.561 [SE p 0.159 ], P p .000 , N p 40 ; sons, 0.565 [0.150],
P p .000, N p 95) and Sangu (daughters, 0.803 [0.465], P p .084 , N p 51 ; sons, 1.338 [1.029], P p .193 , N p 57 ). Sex-specific estimates for
reproductive success (RS) can be made for Datoga (daughters, 0.155 [0.101], P p .123, N p 40; sons, 0.010 [0.09], P p .916, N p 93).
a
M p material, E p embodied, and R p relational.
b
P values calculated from two-tailed tests of hypothesis that true b p 0.
c
Ginis can generally be calculated in larger samples than can b’s (Datoga livestock, 189; Juhaina camels, 33; Sangu cattle, 130; Datoga RS, 186;
Kipsigis cattle partners, 181).
d
Measured by milk collected.
e
Relational wealth based on Kipsigis cattle partners (see Shenk et al. 2010).

2004). More generally, strong intergenerational association
makes sense for the Sangu given clear inheritance rules.
The substantial association between father’s and son’s pat-
rimonies in the Yomut reflects the greater ability of wealthy
men to provide for their sons. It also reveals the tendency of
economically independent sons to camp with or near their
fathers and to maintain cooperation between the two house-
holds. Wealth is not diluted because sons contribute sub-
stantially to increasing the wealth of the paternal household
before taking away a patrimony (Irons 2002). Note that Salz-
man (1998: 43), following Irons (1994), concludes there is
little intergenerational transmission of wealth ranking and
that “livestock patrimonies reflected an 88 percent corre-
spondence to a random shuffle.” The b of 0.56 calculated
here from the same data indicate that a child born into the
top wealth decile is over 80 times more likely to be in the
top wealth decile than a child born to parents in the bottom
decile (for ratio calculation, see Bowles et al. 2010, in this
issue). We interpret this as considerable transmission of ma-
terial wealth, even though Salzman is right to stress there are
few social distinctions among Yomut (see above).
Sex-specific b estimates for livestock can be made for two
populations. In the Datoga, the estimate for daughters (as
well as sons) is significantly different from 0; the same pattern
is seen in the Sangu but is not significant (see note to table
3). Both patterns are primarily attributable to assortative mar-
riage (see below) since inheritances to daughters are minimal.
In the Juhaina, five of the 16 second-generation individuals
are women. Juhaina girls receive no animals from their par-
ents, only wedding gifts, jewelry, and house utensils, and they
usually marry close kin (who presumably are similar in wealth
status).
Our only measure of embodied wealth (RS for the Datoga)
shows a negligible coefficient (b p 0.066) that, as for most
other populations in the broader study (see Smith et al. 2010),
does not differ from 0. Given the association between polyg-
yny and wealth we might expect the sons of wealthy and
polygynous fathers to be polygynous themselves; this seems
to account for the somewhat higher intergenerational cor-
relation in RS found for the polygynous Kipsigis (0.21, P !
.05; Shenk et al. 2010). One explanation for the low Datoga
coefficient may be that the sons in this sample are still quite
young and have not yet achieved their full polygynous po-
tential. Another is that livestock ownership in this and many
other pastoral groups is not strongly associated with either
nutritional outcomes or fertility (Sellen 2003). To the extent
that RS is contingent on nutritional status, this might in part
explain this nonsignificant outcome.
To quantitatively describe inequality within populations, we
use Gini coefficients; these can range from 0 (everyone owns
equally) to virtually 1 (one person or household owns ev-
erything). Our measured Ginis for material wealth range from
0.346 to 0.694, which when averaged and alpha weighted
produce a mean coefficient 0.42 (SE p 0.05).
General Discussion and Conclusion
There is a substantial intergenerational association for ma-
terial wealth (0.67), the wealth class that is most important
for pastoralist populations. Including the single measure of
embodied wealth and an estimate of relational wealth (from
the agropastoral Kipsigis; Shenk et al. 2010) produces an av-
erage weighted b of 0.43. This implies that the child of parents
in the top wealth decile is over 16 times more likely to end
up in the top decile than a child from parents of the bottom
decile. In the discussion we examine what contributes to this
substantial intergenerational transmission of material wealth,
the limitations of our study, and implications for the broader
theme of inequality among pastoralists.

This content downloaded on Tue, 19 Feb 2013 13:24:56 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Borgerhoff Mulder et al. Pastoralism and Wealth Inequality 43

Figure 1. Offspring material wealth plotted on parental material wealth

for Datoga (A), Juhaina Arabs (B), Sangu (C), and Yomut (D). Graph
depicts the linear regression line in the logged data that generates the
estimated elasticity reported in table 3 (for further details see CA⫹ online
supplement “Estimating the Inheritance of Wealth in Premodern Soci-
eties” in the online edition of Current Anthropology; Borgerhoff Mulder
et al. 2009).

Why High Intergenerational Transmission
of Material Wealth?
Three processes can contribute to a high b coefficient: insti-
tutions that ensure that wealth is transmitted primarily within
the family (without dilution), positive assortment (e.g., in
marriage or in economic pursuits), and returns to economies
of scale in herding. In all pastoralist societies material wealth
is principally transmitted within the family through institu-
tionalized bequests, pre- and postmortem. With gifts at life
transitions (birth, eruption of first teeth, sexual maturity, and
marriage), offspring gradually acquire rights to, if not full
ownership of, their parents’ livestock wealth. Usually such
transfers are to sons. Bride payments channel livestock out
of the family, but these are generally replaced by the incoming
payments received for daughters, except in highly male-biased
sibling groups. Such payments also establish relational wealth,
consolidating long-term cooperation with affines as shown in

This content downloaded on Tue, 19 Feb 2013 13:24:56 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 44
East Africa (Håkansson 1990). In short, livestock differentials
persist across generations. Kinship is central to the control
and transfer of livestock, excluding market exchanges, as al-
ready well known.
The question nevertheless arises of how rich pastoralists
prevent the dilution of their wealth? Herd size is commonly
associated with polygyny and high reproductive success
(Cronk 1991; Irons 1979), and therefore, rich men have more
potential inheritors. There are several partial answers here.
First, rich men rarely marry wives in precise proportion to
their wealth; this is because although women generally assort
themselves according to an ideal free distribution among men
according to men’s wealth, they also show a preference for
monogamous men (Borgerhoff Mulder 1990). The greater
variance in wealth than in number of wives observed in many
pastoralist ethnographies suggests this is a general phenom-
ena. Second, polygynously married women typically have
lower numbers of surviving children than monogamously
married women, even after controlling for household wealth
(e.g., Strassmann 2000), although in some populations this
cost is observed only among women married to poorer po-
lygynous men (Borgerhoff Mulder 1997). Third, among most
pastoralists, marriage is firmly under the control of elders, as
Spencer (1998) shows so clearly for African populations. For
example, marriage and fertility in populations depending on
slow-breeding camels, such as the Kenyan Rendille, are con-
strained by parentally monitored cultural conventions that
lower fertility and ensure heirs (Roth 2004). These are possible
reasons for why polygyny does not lead to a linear increase
in number of inheritors and hence the immediate dilution of
wealth across generations. Of course parents can explicitly
avoid resource dilution through primogeniture (or ultimo-
geniture), but this form of inheritance is quite rare among
pastoralists (see table 1). The possible effect of restricting
inheritance to a small set of offspring on equality is discussed
in the concluding paper of this special section (Smith et al.
2010), as is the more general topic of partible versus im-
partible inheritance.
The second process that can contribute to a high b coef-
ficient is positive assortment among families. For sons, this
might take the form of herding arrangements. In many pas-
toralists, a son’s animals are herded, at least for several years,
together with those of his father (Juhaina, Datoga); in many
others, their homesteads are in close vicinity and they con-
tinue to share labor (Sangu, Yomut). To the extent these herds
can benefit from a father’s (or son’s) expertise or stock part-
nerships, such assortment will enhance parent-offspring as-
sociations in material wealth. For daughters, positive assort-
ment might occur through marriage, as indicated by
gender-specific estimates for both Datoga and Sangu (note to
table 3). The extent of intergenerational transmission to
daughters in the Datoga and Sanga is a hitherto unrecognized
dynamic in pastoralist societies, where wealth is seen almost
exclusively as an attribute of men.
Finally, economies of scale might also contribute to high
This content downloaded on Tue, 19 Feb 2013 13:24:56 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
b coefficients for material wealth in pastoralists. Average pro-
ductivity per animal generally declines with herd size, as a
result of both the diminishing quality of care (Herren 1990,
for Mukogodo) and higher mortality (Sperling 1987, for Sam-
buru) observed in larger herds of cattle. It is highly unlikely
however that overall output declines with the size of the herd,
and Berhanu, Colman, and Fayiss (2007) found that invest-
ments of pastoral labor into livestock production had positive
effect of production in the Borana of Ethiopia (see too Naess,
Fauchald, and Tveraa 2009, for the Saami). Thus, there are
increasing returns to labor as herd size increases (or an econ-
omy of scale); that is, if labor is held constant and additional
cows produce a net increase in total output, the marginal cost
(labor cost per unit of production) is decreasing. According
to these arguments, then, high correspondence in livestock
wealth between parents and offspring reflects family-based
rules of inheritance, assortative mechanisms whereby the
wealthy associated with the wealthy and the poor with the
poor, and the economies of scale associated with large herds.
Study Limitations
There are several limitations to this study. First, our measures
of material wealth focus only on livestock, even though con-
trol over pasture, water, and labor can be critical to success
in some systems; indeed the term commons, so frequently
used for pastoralists’ resources, obscures crucial differences
in access, usufruct, and political power (Ruttan and Borger-
hoff Mulder 1999). Furthermore, many pastoralist groups in-
tegrate raising livestock and farming, investing crop surpluses
in capital “on the hoof” and profits from livestock in sacks
of grain. By focusing on systems where livestock are the pri-
mary source of wealth, we greatly simplify the story, with
unknown effects on our estimates of material b.
Second, inheritance rules are far more complex than we
have conveyed here, as noted in the introductory essay in this
special section (Bowles et al. 2010). Since our interest is in
the intergenerational correlation of wealth, not the mecha-
nisms of its transmission, these simplifications are legitimate
and probably do not systematically bias estimates upward or
downward (see Smith et al. 2010). For example, primogeni-
ture (or ultimogeniture; not observed in our samples) should
not affect b estimates if all offspring (inheriting and not) are
included in the second generation. However if noninheriting
offspring emigrate, b may be overestimated (if wealthy in-
dividuals have more children) or underestimated (if only dis-
inherited sons of the poor leave).
A third limitation is data. Given that a principal function
of the family is the “management of property and offices and
their transmission to the next generation through inheritance
and succession” (Harrell 1997: 12), it is surprising there is
no quantitative information (other than Irons’s data on pat-
rimonies) on the role of intergenerationally transmitted be-
quests in redistributing or sustaining wealth differences among
households. This is the case despite fine work on stability (or
Borgerhoff Mulder et al. Pastoralism and Wealth Inequality
lack thereof) of herd size over time (as reviewed in Bradburd
1982). We hope that our conclusions drawn from parent-
offspring associations in wealth will stimulate more research
on this topic.
Pastoralism and Inequality
There is a historical tendency to romanticize pastoralism.
Early anthropological work, popular coffee table productions,
and even some development consultants’ analyses lionize pas-
toralists as fierce, resourceful, and proudly egalitarian (sources
reviewed in Waller and Sobania 1994). Pastoralism is thought
to have emerged in Eurasia as a form of anarchic revolt among
disgruntled peasant pirates at the margins of agrarian states
(Lattimore 1951), which was characterized as an unruly en-
gine priming change across European and Asian society
(McNeill 1963). This image leaves a residual expectation that
pastoralist communities are essentially egalitarian, even if they
occupy a clearly ranked position in the broader political-
economic system in which they are embedded, as discussed
in the introduction.
The argument for egalitarianism is based on two related
claims—the volatility, mobility, and indefensibility of pastoral
wealth and the existence of institutions that redistribute
wealth as a form of insurance. Regarding the nature of the
wealth, Schneider’s (1979) argument is classic: in the dry areas
of East Africa, where there are no tsetse flies and the livestock
to human ratio exceeds 1 : 1, egalitarianism emerges from the
inability of any person to monopolize its production. Indeed,
almost all ethnographers in both Asia and Africa stress the
potential for both rapid growth and catastrophic loss of herds,
and the consequential fluctuations in a household’s livestock
wealth over time. Regarding insurance, herders commonly
buffer themselves against unpredictable shocks to their capital
by subscribing to institutions that ensure redistribution (as
described earlier), such that extreme wealth differences are
believed to be relatively short lived. Contemplating such in-
stitutions in the Somali and other “tribal” societies, Lewis
concludes, “The more one produces the more one is expected
to give away; the positive side of this equation is that the
greater one’s generosity the stronger . . . one’s corresponding
entitlement to support and succor in time of need” (1976:
176). Thus among the cattle pastoralists in Madagascar lavish
funeral feasting redistributes the wealth of the elite (Parker
Pearson 1999; see too Almagor 1978).
There is, however, abundant evidence of differentials in
livestock holdings, production, health, and control of labor
that render this perspective problematic (reviewed in Fratkin,
Roth, and Galvin 1994). Economic inequalities are found not
just in modern ethnographies where pastoralists suffer at the
hands of the modern state but also in careful analyses of
livestock accumulation among classic “egalitarian” groups like
the Nuer (Kelly 1985) and detailed ethnographies of south-
west Asian small stock owners (e.g., Barth 1961). Observing
extreme wealth differentials among Maasai in 1912–1913,
This content downloaded on Tue, 19 Feb 2013 13:24:56 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
45
Waller (1999: 41) comments we need not invoke the “specter
of development” to explain pastoral poverty. Furthermore, in
some populations livestock transfers do not reinforce equality
but rather buttress patron-client relationships, as in the
Himba, where big men dominate over corporate matrilineal
descent groups (Bollig 2006). Such economic disparities are
exacerbated by gerontocratic institutions that influence re-
production (Roth 2004), access to pasture (Lane 1996), and
gender relations (Talle 1988). Indeed 81% of the SCCS pop-
ulations (table 1) have some form of stratification. Our find-
ings regarding substantial levels of intergenerational trans-
mission of wealth and high Gini coefficients support the view
that persistent economic inequality characterizes pastoralists.
Such inequalities are exacerbated by the role of livestock
in buffering households from leaving the pastoral sector (Bor-
gerhoff Mulder and Sellen 1994). Those with plentiful stock
can get loans, sell animals, and diversify without diminishing
their seed capital for new growth. Thus, in the Maasai (Gran-
din 1989) and Ariaal (Fratkin and Roth 1990), only rich fam-
ilies retain sufficient animals for pastoral subsistence after a
drought. Regressing 1989 livestock holdings on 1987 holdings
for Datoga shows that, indeed, the rich get richer whereas the
poor get poorer (as explored in detail by Sieff 1999), insofar
as the slope (1.146 [SE 0.08], P ! .001) is 11 (a slope of !1
indicates regression to the mean). Echoing the same senti-
ment, Lakenkhel shepherds of Afghanistan claim, “When you
have small number of sheep, about 60, it is very difficult to
get more, but when you have 500 sheep and some money on
top of that it is possible to increase the flock” (Balikçi 1990:
313); similar dynamics are reported for the southwest Asian
Komachi (Bradburd 1982) and Basseri (Barth 1961). Families
with large herds also generally enjoy larger and more durable
exchange networks (Waller and Sobania 1994); thus, wealthy
Kipsigis households have more cattle partners (mean p
0.55, n p 156, P ! .001; Shenk et al. 2010), and richer Pokot
and Himba households use their cattle-loaning networks and
exchange partners to reconstitute herds more effectively than
poorer households (Bollig 2006). Despite this evidence for
how the dynamics of pastoral production generate persistent
and high levels of inequality, it is important to acknowledge
that some of the more complex stratification seen in central
Asian states (not represented in our sample) also reflects the
regional political-economic systems in which pastoralist com-
munities are embedded.
Before concluding, there are two points to emphasize re-
garding this emerging picture of pastoralist economic in-
equality. First, why do they typically view themselves as egal-
itarian? One answer lies in their perception of the volatility
of livestock wealth—thus the Pokot aphorism “Never laugh
at a pauper—tomorrow it may be you who is poor” (Bollig
2006: 373) or an equivalent Yomut taunt: “Rich man, the year
of Bijin (thought to bring catastrophic bad luck) is coming!”
One reason for this emic misconception may be that pastoral
communities are rarely demographically or economically dis-
crete, despite apparent social boundaries. Pastoralists move
 46
with alacrity in and out of herding (Barth 1961; Waller 1985),
juggling a variety of economic interests and spawning seg-
ments of the population with different subsistence speciali-
zations. Sometimes in the pursuit of economic specialization
they strategically adopt a new ethnicity, such as the bilingual
Maasai-Okiek (see Waller and Sobania 1994 for a historical
review of such dynamics). In this way the pastoral system
with its ideology of egalitarianism persists, even as the pop-
ulations shed people who chose or are forced to adopt other
ways of life. Indeed formal egalitarian ideologies may be es-
sential to the preservation of actual inequality, while inequality
is a guarantee of community survival (Waller 1999). A second
reason for this emic perception is that, as Salzman (1998)
emphasizes, wealth differences do not necessarily produce
status differentials; thus, the Yomut do not recognize their
considerable distinctions in economic status in social inter-
action, symbolism, or ideology. The broader complex rela-
tionship between economic differentiation and sociopolitical
stratification is not addressed in this paper.
Second, there is strong evidence (for Datoga and other
populations, reviewed above) that the effects of shocks are not
random with respect to wealth—wealthier households
weather calamities better than poorer ones. In conjunction
with the reliable transmission of material wealth between gen-
erations (as shown here), these dynamics generate persistent
inequality among households. Bradburd was right to posit
that “random fluctuation in herd gain and loss over time is
not likely to lead to a long term equalization of wealth among
households but, on the contrary . . . to the development of
significant differentials of wealth” (Bradburd 1982: 101; see
too Barth 1961 and Waller 1999). A further implication of
this position is that the prevalence of generosity and leveling
mechanisms among pastoralists must ultimately be viewed as
signals of goodwill that do indeed effectively buffer the re-
ceiver and insure the giver but do not produce the egalitarian
systems that they have been credited with ensuring. The anal-
ysis presented in this paper demonstrates the importance of
not simply cataloguing wealth differences at any one point of
time but exploring the underlying mechanisms that contribute
to inequality not only over the household’s domestic cycle
(as has already been done) but across generations.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the Behavioral Sciences Program at
the Santa Fe Institute for support. Our fieldwork was sup-
ported by the National Geographic Society (M. Borgerhoff
Mulder), the National Science Foundation (R. L. McElreath,
W. Irons), the Ford Foundation (R. L. McElreath, W. Irons),
the MacArthur Foundation (R. L. McElreath), and the H. F.
Guggenheim Foundation (W. Irons). We would like to thank
Michael Bollig, Paul Leslie, and Richard Waller for their
thoughtful observations and suggestions.
This content downloaded on Tue, 19 Feb 2013 13:24:56 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
References Cited
Almagor, U. 1978. Pastoral partners. Manchester University
Press, Manchester.
Balikçi, A. 1990. Tenure and transhumance: stratification and
pastoralism among the Lakenkhel. In The world of pastor-
alism. J. G. Galaty and D. L. Johnson, eds. Pp. 301–322.
London: Bellhaven.
Barth, F. 1961. Nomads of south Persia. Oslo: Oslo University
Press.
———. 1964. Capital, investment and social structure of a
pastoral nomad group in south Persia. In Capital, saving
and credit in peasant societies. R. Firth and B. S. Yamey,
eds. Pp. 69–81. Chicago: Aldine.
Bentley, G. R., G. Jasienska, and T. Goldberg. 1993. Is the
fertility of agriculturalists higher than that of nonagricul-
turalists? Current Anthropology 34:778–785.
Berhanu, W., D. Colman, and B. Fayiss. 2007. Diversification
and livelihood sustainability in a semi-arid environment: a
case study from southern Ethiopia. Journal of Development
Studies 43:871–889.
Bollig, M. 2006. Risk management in a hazardous environment.
New York: Springer.
Borgerhoff Mulder, Monique. 1990. Kipsigis women’s pref-
erences for wealthy men: evidence for female choice in
mammals. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 27:255–264.
———. 1991. Datoga pastoralists of Tanzania. National Geo-
graphic Research and Exploration 7:166–187.
———. 1992. Demography of pastoralists: preliminary data
on the Datoga of Tanzania. Human Ecology 20:1–23.
———. 1997. Marrying a married man. In Human nature.
L. Betzig, ed. Pp. 115–117. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Borgerhoff Mulder, Monique, Samuel Bowles, Tom Hertz,
Adrian Bell, Jan Beise, Gregory Clark, Ila Fazzio, et al. 2009.
Intergenerational transmission of wealth and dynamics of
inequality in pre-modern societies. Science 326:682–688.
Borgerhoff Mulder, M., and D. W. Sellen. 1994. Pastoralist
decision-making: a behavioral ecological perspective. In Af-
rican pastoralist systems. E. Fratkin, K. Galivin, and E. Roth,
eds. Pp. 205–230. Boulder, CO: Rienner.
Bowles, Samuel, Eric Alden Smith, and Monique Borgerhoff
Mulder. 2010. The emergence and persistence of inequality
in premodern societies: introduction to the special section.
Current Anthropology 51(1):7–17.
Bradburd, D. 1982. Volatility of animal wealth among south-
west Asian pastoralists. Human Ecology 10:85–106.
———. 1989. Producing their fates: why poor Basseri settled
but poor Kamachi and Yomut did not. American Ethnologist
16:502–517.
Bruford, M., D. G. Bradley, and G. Luikart. 2003. DNA mark-
ers reveal the complexity of livestock domestication. Nature
Reviews Genetics 4:900–910.
Cronk, L. 1991. Wealth, status and reproductive success
among the Mukogodo of Kenya. American Anthropologist
93:345–360.
Borgerhoff Mulder et al. Pastoralism and Wealth Inequality
Dahl, G., and A. Hjort. 1976. Having herds. Stockholm: Uni-
versity of Stockholm, Department of Social Anthropology.
Dyson-Hudson, R., and N. Dyson-Hudson. 1980. Nomadic
pastoralism. Annual Reviews of Anthropology 9:15–61.
Ellis, J. E., and D. M. Swift. 1988. Stability of African pastoral
ecosystems: alternate paradigms and implications for de-
velopment. Journal of Range Management 41:450–459.
Fazzio, I. 2008. Parental investment among Arab and Dazagada
herding societies of West Chad. Berlin: VDM.
Fratkin, E. 1989. Household variation and gender inequality
in Ariaal pastoral production: results of a stratified time-
allocation survey. American Anthropologist 9:430–440.
Fratkin, E., and E. A. Roth. 1990. Drought and economic
differentiation among Araiaal pastoralists of Kenya. Human
Ecology 184:385–402.
Fratkin, E., E. A. Roth, and K. Galvin. 1994. Introduction. In
African pastoralist systems. E. Fratkin, K. A. Galvin, and E.
A. Roth, eds. Pp. 1–15. Boulder, CO: Rienner.
Galaty, J. G., and D. L. Johnson. 1990. Introduction: pastoral
systems in global perspective. In The world of pastoralism.
J. G. Galaty and D. L. Johnson, eds. Pp. 1–31. London:
Bellhaven.
Galvin, K., K. Shelley, B. R. Johnson, and M. Mugambi. 1988.
Resources, biology and health of pastoralists. In Arid lands:
today and tomorrow. E. M. Whitehead, C. Hutchinson, B.
Timmermann, and R. Varady, eds. Pp. 713–726. Boulder,
CO: Westview.
Gluckman, M. 1950. Kinship and marriage among the Lozi
of northern Rhodesia and the Zulu of Natal. In African
systems of kinship and marriage. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown and
D. Forde, eds. Pp. 166–206. London: Oxford University
Press.
Goldschmidt, W. 1969. Kambuya’s cattle. Berkeley, CA: Uni-
versity of California Press.
Grandin, B. 1989. Labor sufficiency, livestock management,
and time allocation on Maasai group ranches. Research in
Economic Anthropology 11:143–178.
Gray, R. F., and P. H. Gulliver, eds. 1964. The family estate in
Africa. Boston: Boston University Press.
Grayzel, J. A. 1990. Markets and migration: a Fulbe pastoral
system in Mali. In The world of pastoralism. J. G. Galaty
and D. L. Johnson, eds. Pp. 33–67. London: Bellhaven.
Håkansson, T. 1990. Descent, bridewealth, and terms of al-
liance in east African societies. Research in Economic An-
thropology 12:149–173.
Harrell, S. 1997. Human families. Boulder, CO: Westview.
Herren, U. J. 1990. Socioeconomic stratification and small
stock production in Mukogodo Division, Kenya. Research
in Economic Anthropology 12:29–54.
Herskovits, M. J. 1926. The cattle complex in East Africa.
American Anthropologist 28:230–272, 361–388, 494–528,
633–664.
Hewlett, B. 1991. Demography and childcare in preindustrial
societies. Journal of Anthropological Research 46:1–37.
This content downloaded on Tue, 19 Feb 2013 13:24:56 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
47
Homewood, K. M., and W. A. Rogers. 1991. Maasailand ecol-
ogy. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Ingold, T. 1980. Hunters, pastoralists and ranchers: reindeer
economies and their transformations. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Irons, W. 1979. Cultural and biological success. In Evolution-
ary biology and human social behavior. N. A. Chagnon and
W. Irons, eds. Pp. 252–272. North Scituate, MA: Duxbury.
———. 1994. Why are the Yomut not more stratified? In
Pastoralists at the periphery. C. Chang and H. A. Koster,
eds. Pp. 275–296. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
———. 2002. Yomut family organization and demography.
In Human biology of pastoral populations. W. R. Leonard
and M. H. Crawford, eds. Pp. 251–279. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press.
Jacobs, A. H. 1965. African pastoralism: some general re-
marks. Anthropological Quarterly 38:144–154.
Johnson, B. R. 1999. Social networks and exchange. In Tur-
kana herders of the dry savanna. M. A. Little and P. W.
Leslie, eds. Pp. 89–106. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kaplan, H. 1996. A theory of fertility and parental investment
in traditional and modern human societies. Yearbook of
Physical Anthropology 39:91–135.
Kelly, R. 1985. The Nuer conquest. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press.
Klima, G. 1964. Jural relations between the sexes among the
Barabaig. Africa 34:9–19.
Kluckhohn, C., and D. C. Leighton. 1974. The Navaho. Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Koptyoff, I., and S. Miers. 1977. African “slavery” as an in-
stitution of marginality. In Slavery in Africa. S. Miers and
I. Koptyoff, eds. Pp. 3–81. Madison: University of Wis-
consin Press.
Kradin, N. N. 2002. Nomadism, evolution and world-systems:
pastoral societies in theories of historical development.
Journal of World-Systems Research 8:368–388.
Lane, C. 1996. Pastures lost. Nairobi: Initiatives.
Lattimore, O. 1951. Inner Asian frontiers of China. New York:
American Geographical Society.
Leslie, P., and B. Winterhalder. 2002. Demographic conse-
quences of unpredictability in fertility outcomes. American
Journal of Human Biology 14:168–183.
Lewis, I. M. 1976. Social anthropology in perspective. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Little, M. A., and P. W. Leslie, eds. 1999. Turkana herders of
the dry savanna. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Massell, B. 1963. Econometric variations on a theme by
Schneider. Economic Development and Cultural Change 12:
34–41.
McElreath, R. L. 2004. Social learning and the maintenance
of cultural variation: an evolutionary model and data from
East Africa. American Anthropologist 106:308–321.
McNeill, W. H. 1963. The rise of the West: the history of human
community. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Naess, M. W., P. Fauchald, and T. Tveraa. 2009. Scale depen-
 48
dency and the “marginal” value of labor. Human Ecology
37:193–211.
Obama, B. 2004. Dreams from my father. New York: Three
Rivers.
Orlove, B. S. 1981. Native Andean pastoralists: traditional
adaptations and recent changes. Studies in Third World So-
cieties 17:95–135.
Parker Pearson, M. 1999. The archaeology of death and burial.
Stroud, UK: Sutton.
Randall, S. 1994. Are pastoralists demographically different
from sedentary agriculturalists? In Environment and pop-
ulation change. B. Zaba and J. Clarke, eds. Pp. 325–347.
Liege: Ordina.
Richerson, P. J., M. Borgerhoff Mulder, and B. J. Vila. 1996.
Principles of human ecology. Needham Heights, MA: Simon
& Schuster.
Rigby, P. 1985. Persistent pastoralists. London: Zed.
Roth, E. A. 2004. Culture, biology and anthropological demog-
raphy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ruttan, L. M., and M. Borgerhoff Mulder. 1999. Are East
African pastoralists truly conservationists? Current Anthro-
pology 40:621–652.
Salzman, P. C. 1971. Movement and resource extraction
among pastoral nomads: the case of the Shah Naazi Baluch.
Anthropological Quarterly 44:185–197.
———. 1998. Is inequality universal? Current Anthropology
40:31–61.
Sandford, S. 1983. Management of pastoral development in the
Third World. London: Wiley.
Schneider, H. K. 1979. Livestock and equality in East Africa.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Sellen, D. W. 1999. Growth patterns among semi-nomadic
pastoralists (Datoga) of Tanzania. American Journal of Phys-
ical Anthropology 109:187–209.
———. 2003. Nutritional consequences of wealth differen-
tials in East African pastoralists: the case of the Datoga of
northern Tanzania. Human Ecology 31:529–570.
Sellen, D. W., M. Borgerhoff Mulder, and D. F. Sieff. 2000.
Fertility, offspring quality, and wealth in Datoga pastoral-
ists: testing evolutionary models of intersexual selection. In
Adaptation and human behavior. L. Cronk, N. Chagnon,
and W. Irons, eds. Pp. 91–114. New York: Aldine de
Gruyter.
Sellen, D. W., and R. Mace. 1997. Fertility and mode of sub-
sistence: a phylogenetic analysis. Current Anthropology 38:
878–889.
This content downloaded on Tue, 19 Feb 2013 13:24:56 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
Shenk, Mary K., Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Jan Beise, Greg-
ory Clark, William Irons, Donna Leonetti, Bobbi S. Low,
et al. 2010. Intergenerational wealth transmission among
agriculturalists: foundations of agrarian inequality. Current
Anthropology 51(1):65–83.
Shorter, A. 1972. Chiefship in western Tanzania. Oxford:
Clarendon.
Sieff, D. F. 1997. Herding strategies of the Datoga pastoralists
of Tanzania: is household labor a limiting factor? Human
Ecology 25:519–544.
———. 1999. The effects of wealth on livestock dynamics
among the Datoga pastoralists of Tanzania. Agricultural Sys-
tems 59:1–25.
Smith, Eric Alden, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Samuel
Bowles, Michael Gurven, Tom Hertz, and Mary K. Shenk.
2010. Production systems, inheritance, and inequality in
premodern societies: conclusions. Current Anthropology
51(1):85–94.
Sneath, D. 2000. Changing Inner Mongolia. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Spencer, P. 1998. The pastoral continuum. London: Oxford
University Press.
Sperling, L. 1987. Food acquisition during the African drought
of 1983–84: a study of Kenyan herders. Disasters 2:263–272.
Stenning, D. J. 1959. Savannah nomads. London: Oxford Uni-
versity Press.
Strassmann, B. I. 2000. Polygyny, family structure, and child
mortality: a prospective study among the Dogon of Mali.
In Adaptation and human behavior. L. Cronk, N. Chagnon,
and W. Irons, eds. Pp. 49–68. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de
Gruyter.
Talle, A. 1988. Women at a loss. Stockholm: University of
Stockholm, Department of Social Anthropology.
Tomikawa, M. 1978. Family and daily life: an ethnography of
the Datoga pastoralists in Mangola. 1. Senri Ethological
Studies 1:1–36.
Waller, R. 1985. Ecology, migration, and expansion in East
Africa. African Affairs 85:347–370.
Waller, R., and N. W. Sobania. 1994. Pastoralism in historical
perspective. In African pastoralist systems. E. Fratkin, K. A.
Galvin, and E. A. Roth, eds. Pp. 45–68. Boulder, CO:
Rienner.
Waller, R. D. 1999. Pastoral poverty in historical perspective.
In The poor are not us. D. Anderson and V. Broche-Due,
eds. Pp. 20–49. Oxford: Currey.
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010 49

Intergenerational Wealth Transmission and

Inequality in Premodern Societies

Domestication Alone Does Not

Lead to Inequality
Intergenerational Wealth Transmission among Horticulturalists

by Michael Gurven, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Paul L. Hooper,

Hillard Kaplan, Robert Quinlan, Rebecca Sear, Eric Schniter,
Christopher von Rueden, Samuel Bowles, Tom Hertz, and Adrian Bell
CA⫹ Online-Only Supplement: Estimating the Inheritance of Wealth in Premodern Societies

We present empirical measures of wealth inequality and its intergenerational transmission among
four horticulturalist populations. Wealth is construed broadly as embodied somatic and neural capital,
including body size, fertility and cultural knowledge, material capital such as land and household
wealth, and relational capital in the form of coalitional support and field labor. Wealth inequality is
moderate for most forms of wealth, and intergenerational wealth transmission is low for material
resources and moderate for embodied and relational wealth. Our analysis suggests that domestication
alone does not transform social structure; rather, the presence of scarce, defensible resources may
be required before inequality and wealth transmission patterns resemble the familiar pattern in more
complex societies. Land ownership based on usufruct and low-intensity cultivation, especially in the
context of other economic activities such as hunting and fishing, is associated with more egalitarian
wealth distributions as found among hunter-gatherers.

This paper quantifies the level of inequality in the types of
wealth common to small-scale horticultural populations and
the extent to which wealth is correlated across generations.
Michael Gurven is Associate Professor in the Integrative Anthropo-
logical Sciences Program of the University of California, Santa Barbara
(Santa Barbara, California 93106, U.S.A. [gurven@anth.ucsb.edu]).
Monique Borgerhoff Mulder is Professor in the Department of An-
thropology and the Graduate Group in Ecology at the University of
California, Davis (Davis, California 95616-8522, U.S.A.). Paul L.
Hooper is a Research Assistant in the Department of Anthropology
at the University of New Mexico (Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131,
U.S.A.). Hillard Kaplan is Professor in the Department of Anthro-
pology at the University of New Mexico (Albuquerque, New Mexico
87131, U.S.A.). Robert Quinlan is Associate Professor in the De-
partment of Anthropology at Washington State University (Pullman,
Washington 99164, U.S.A.). Rebecca Sear is Senior Lecturer in Pop-
ulation Studies in the Department of Social Policy at the London School
of Economics (Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, United King-
dom). Eric Schniter is a PhD candidate in the Integrative Anthro-
pological Sciences Program at the University of California, Santa Bar-
bara (Santa Barbara, California 93106, U.S.A.). Christopher von
Knowledge of the variability in each wealth type, how different
wealth types combine, and the extent to which wealth is cor-
related across generations can help us address several impor-
tant questions concerning the evolution of inequality: (1) Is
inequality more common for certain types of wealth? (2) To
what extent does inequality in one generation impact the level
of inequality in the next? (3) How much socioeconomic status
mobility exists across generations? (4) Do different horticul-
Rueden is a graduate student in the Integrative Anthropological Sci-
ences Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara (Santa
Barbara, California 93106, U.S.A.). Samuel Bowles is Research Pro-
fessor and Director of the Behavioral Sciences Program at the Santa
Fe Institute (1399 Hyde Park Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501,
U.S.A.) and Professor of Economics at the University of Siena. Tom
Hertz is Visiting Professor of Economics at the International University
College of Turin (Piazza Carlo Felice 18, 10121, Torino, Italy). Adrian
Bell is a doctoral student in the Department of Anthropology and the
Graduate Group in Ecology at the University of California, Davis
(Davis, California 95616, U.S.A.). This paper was submitted 30 IV
09 and accepted 21 VII 09.

䉷 2010 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2010/5101-0006$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/648587

This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:57:48 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 50
tural populations show similar patterns of inequality within
and across generations, such that generalizations about hor-
ticultural production systems can be made?
We start by exploring the commonalities among popula-
tions that use horticulture as their primary production system,
basing our analysis on empirical data collected among extant
horticulturalists: Dominicans, Mandinka of Gambia, Pimbwe
of Tanzania, and Tsimane of Bolivia.
Horticultural Production System
Horticulture, or “garden cultivation,” describes small-scale,
low-intensity agricultural production based on human labor
inputs and simple tools (Bates 2001). Subsistence is based on
modification of plants and their environments in order to in-
crease their productivity and utility to people. Production is
aimed at household provisioning rather than cash-cropping or
export. Horticulturalists also commonly engage in substantial
fishing, hunting, or other extractive foraging activities, but the
bulk of the diet comes from domesticated plant species culti-
vated in garden plots.1 Unlike many foraging groups, however,
horticulturalist households are characterized as relatively self-
sufficient. Access to more predictable and storable agricultural
produce attenuates interfamily resource sharing and increases
sedentism and territoriality. For example, food-sharing net-
works are more restricted among Ache who live on permanent
settlement and grow crops on private plots than among those
who forage nomadically in the forest (Gurven, Hill, and Kaplan
2002). Horticulturalists tend to live in aggregations that are
larger and more sedentary than those of foragers. Available
evidence from precontact societies suggests that raids and in-
tergroup aggression are fairly common among horticulturalists
or at least as common as among foragers (Keeley 1996; Wran-
gham, Wilson, and Muller 2006). Table 1 describes domestic
organization, descent patterns, settlement patterns and village
size, property right, and wealth stratification among the 83
horticulturalist societies from Murdock and White’s (1969)
Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (SCCS).
Horticultural production first appeared in Southwest Asia
and the Middle East during the Neolithic 9,000–11,000 years
ago and in other geographical regions by 3,000–6,000 years ago
(Bellwood 2005). Plant domestication and animal domestica-
tion have been viewed as watershed processes in the develop-
ment of human cultures and civilizations. All civilizations have
been based on cultivation of one or more of six plant species:
wheat, barley, millet, rice, maize, and potatoes. Population pres-
sure, climatic and environmental change, reduced densities of
large animals, and cultural transmission have been cited as key
ingredients in the adoption of food production (Flannery 1973;
Rindos 1987). Variability in the timing and expression of ag-
riculture has been related to local differences in these factors
1. Because much of the protein and lipids in the diet often come from
animal and fish consumption, these groups have often been referred to
as horticulturalists-foragers or forager-horticulturalists.
This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:57:48 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
and in the availability of domesticable species and trade net-
works (Diamond 1999; Harris 1977).
Horticultural societies vary along ecological, social, and po-
litical dimensions, but commonalities can be identified (Bates
2001). First, horticulturalist households tend to be relatively
independent and make their own decisions in regard to food
production without centralized authority. Second, horticul-
ture provides relatively low yield per land area, and so sur-
pluses are unusual. Farming techniques found in many hor-
ticultural systems are slash-and-burn and polyculture.
Slash-and-burn involves the clearing and burning of trees and
brush to reduce competition from wild plants and to add soil
nutrients from the ashes. After several cycles, productivity
declines as a result of low nitrate and potassium levels, and
the cleared areas are left fallow to return to brush or forest.
Polyculture involves a mix of crops or varieties interspersed
in the same field, including root crops, fruit trees, palms, and
cereals (maize, millet, barley, or rice). The mix of crops en-
sures ground cover for most of the year and helps prevent
erosion. A reliance on tree crops is also common. As gardens
“age,” the combination of trees and crops will vary. Relatively
short cropping periods and long fallows mean that new fields
may be created frequently. Third, horticulture relies on simple
tools such as digging sticks, hoes, machetes, and axes rather
than plows, machines, or irrigation. Without irrigation, hor-
ticulturalists depend on the seasonal cycle of rainfall. Hor-
ticulture is best suited to humid, tropical conditions, where
more intensive techniques such as monocropping and clear-
cutting, in combination with heavy rainfall, often lead to soil
erosion and degradation and fungal infections of crops.
Wealth
For many horticulturalists, wealth is somatic: stored in human
bodies and channeled into growth, reproduction, and im-
mune function. Most horticultural populations do not prac-
tice efficient birth control, and fertility tends to be relatively
high, averaging more than five offspring per woman (Bentley,
Jasienska, and Goldberg 1993; Wood 1994). A wealthy hor-
ticulturalist is healthy, well fed, and fertile.
Ecological knowledge is important for efficient food pro-
duction. While several studies emphasize the difficulty of
hunting (Gurven, Kaplan, and Gutierrez 2006; Ohtsuka 1989;
Walker et al. 2002), horticulture may also require substantial
knowledge and skill to learn proper timing for burning, plot
rotation, planting techniques, pest control, and soil manage-
ment (Conklin 1957). Although the bulk of the calories in
horticultural groups comes from carbohydrate staples, such
as yams, plantains, and rice, much time is spent engaging in
other activities that provide important nutrients as well as
prestige, such as hunting and spear fishing (Hames 1989).
Animal domestication is not uncommon but is usually con-
fined to small animals such as chickens, goats, pigs, and sheep.
Despite the self-reliance of horticultural households, social
networks through kinship or alliances are important to insure
Table 1. Geographic, social, and inheritance characteristics of n p 83 horticultural societies

Characteristics Percentage (%)

a
Region:
Africa 18.1
Circum-Mediterranean 3.6
East Eurasia 12.0
Insular Pacific 28.9
North America 9.6
South America 27.7
Domestic organization:
Independent nuclear families, monogamous 3.6
Independent nuclear families, occasional polygyny 26.5
Polygyny 16.9
Minimal (stem) extended families 6.0
Small extended families 16.9
Large extended families 28.9
Descent:
Patrilineal 34.9
Duolateral/bilineal 7.2
Matrilineal 22.9
Quasi lineages 4.8
Ambilineal 3.6
Bilateral 26.5
Mean size of local villages:
!50 13.3
50–99 18.1
100–199 14.5
200–399 12.0
400–1,000 12.0
1,000–5,000 1.2
5,000⫹ 2.4
Settlement patterns:
Migratory or nomadic 7.2
Seminomadic 8.4
Semisedentary 6.0
Compact impermanent settlements 3.6
Dispersed family homesteads/separated hamlets 27.7
Compact, permanent settlements 43.4
Complex settlements 3.6
Inheritance of real property:
Absence of property rights or inheritance rules 31.3
Matrilineal (sister’s sons) 3.6
Other matrilineal heirs (e.g., younger brother) 7.2
Children (with daughters receiving less) 4.8
Children (equally for both sexes) 2.4
Other patrilineal heirs (e.g., younger brothers) 6.0
Patrilineal (sons) 20.5
Distribution of property among individuals of same category:
Real property:
Equal or relatively equal 24.1
Exclusively or predominantly to the one adjudged best qualified .0
Ultimogeniture (to the junior individual) 1.2
Primogeniture (to the senior individual) 15.7
No rules or insufficient information 57.8
Movable property:
Equal or relatively equal 44.6
Exclusively or predominantly to the one adjudged best qualified 1.2
Ultimogeniture (to the junior individual) 2.4
Primogeniture (to the senior individual) 13.3
No rules or insufficient information 38.6
Class stratification (prevailing type):
Absence among freemen 45.8
Wealth distinctions 24.1
Elite (control of land, etc.) 2.4
Dual (hereditary aristocracy) 25.3
Complex (social classes) 2.4

Note. The 83 societies were defined by groups showing “casual agriculture,” “extensive or shifting agriculture,” and
“horticulture,” from the 186 societies comprising the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (Murdock and White 1969).
a
Percent of 83 societies.

This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:57:48 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 52
long-term livelihood (Hadley, Borgerhoff Mulder, and Fitz-
herbert 2007; Patton 2005). Networks are vital for soliciting
aid during episodes of sickness or disability (Sugiyama and
Chacon 2000), crop failure (Hadley 2004), and recruiting allies
during conflict (Patton 2005). Indeed, many horticulturalists
in the Amazon and New Guinea were involved in frequent
raiding of their neighbors (Keeley 1996). Physical size and mus-
cular strength are associated with others’ perceptions of dom-
inance. Prestige and leadership are based largely on behavioral
attributes, such as intelligence, charisma, and oratory skill, and
are achieved and maintained through social support (Henrich
and Gil-White 2001; von Rueden, Gurven, and Kaplan 2008).
Numerous studies examine status differentials among hor-
ticulturalists (mostly men) and link these to favorable cultural
outcomes. Owners of more land and with resident parents
show higher reproductive success (RS) in the Caribbean
(Flinn 1986; Quinlan and Hagen 2008). High-status Ifalukese
men marry at younger ages, and their wives have higher fer-
tility because of smaller interbirth intervals (Turke and Betzig
1985). Yanomamö with unokai status for killing other men
have more wives and more surviving children (Chagnon
1988). Better Tsimane and Piro hunters show greater fertility
and RS (Gurven and von Rueden 2006). Healthier and taller
adults also show higher fitness among rural Kavango in Na-
mibia (Kirchengast and Winkler 1995, 1996) and rural Gam-
bians (Sear 2006; Sear, Allal, and Mace 2004). Polygyny is
fairly common among horticulturalist societies, where men
compete to obtain multiple wives.
As among foragers, material wealth is limited among most
horticulturalists. Food is often used as a currency for ex-
change, recruitment, and signaling, beyond immediate con-
sumption. Other rare and valued materials may signal wealth,
such as shells, carved stone, ivory, bone, ceramics, tools, and
decorative objects. In resource- or land-limited regions, how-
ever, access to land, water, fish, or game may be restricted,
and so access to territories and farming land may be controlled
and transmitted through lineages.
Few studies have measured variability in wealth holdings
among horticulturalists. An analysis of rice holdings, cash
income, and household assets among 511 households from
59 Tsimane villages revealed Gini coefficients ranging from
0.28 for household wealth to 0.54 for cash income (Godoy
et al. 2004). Interestingly, there was little increase or decrease
in inequality among villages that varied by level of accultur-
ation. In two villages, Gini coefficients of 0.31 and 0.38 were
calculated for number of close kin, a form of relational wealth
(von Rueden, Gurven, and Kaplan 2008).
Equality and Inequality
Sexual Division of Labor
Sexual divisions of labor are present in horticultural societies.
Men’s activities sometimes receive higher public recognition
than do women’s, although men’s work and women’s work
This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:57:48 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
have also been viewed as “separate but equal” spheres (Collier
1988; Sanday 1981). There may be less division of labor
among horticulturalists than among foragers because both
men and women contribute to horticulture. Some notable
exceptions to sexual egalitarianism exist, from common men-
strual taboos to punishment of female disobedience by group
rape among the Mundurucu (Murphy and Murphy 1974).
Some societies that engage in frequent warfare (e.g., Gebusi,
Mehinaku) have men’s houses, where socialization of boys
occurs separately from that of girls (Knauft 1985).
Status Differentiation
Not all horticulturalists fit the same traditional labels popular-
ized by Service (1962; e.g., band, tribe, or chiefdom) or those
popularized by Fried (1967; egalitarian, ranked, and stratified
societies). Many horticultural groups are fairly egalitarian and
autonomous but show more status differentiation than foragers.
Village leaders or headmen are often older charismatic adult
men with many kin ties and allies (Arhem 1981; Kracke 1978;
Maybury-Lewis 1974; Mindlin 1985; von Rueden, Gurven, and
Kaplan 2008); they often carry no real authority or power to
reward and punish but instead may coordinate activities, host
events, and negotiate relationships with outsiders. Horticul-
turalists characterized by high mobility, little storage, small
group size, and interdependence are more likely to be egali-
tarian, similar to foraging groups, whereas horticulturalists that
differ along these dimensions tend to display greater levels of
inequality, as found among complex hunter-gatherers (Testart
1982). Property ownership and territoriality are more culturally
explicit among horticulturalists than among many foragers,
while leveling mechanisms designed to maintain egalitarianism
(Wiessner 1996) are less evident but not absent. Accusations
of witchcraft or sorcery among aggrandizers are common in
horticulturalist societies (Hill and Gurven 2004; Paciotti and
Hadley 2003). Extensive wealth accumulation and self-aggran-
dizing are atypical among egalitarian horticulturalists. Craft and
ritual specialists, politicians, and formal leaders are not un-
common (Chagnon 1968; Johnson and Earle 1987). In the past,
when skirmishes over arable land were likely less of a problem
than today, competition may have been greater over labor to
work fields and generate surplus. The need for labor sometimes
was reflected in a formal or legal possession of slaves (Koptyoff
and Miers 1977). Slavery is rare among ethnographically present
societies, although several horticulturalist populations tradi-
tionally had slaves (Colson 1960; Stearman 1988); 21 out of
the 83 horticulturalist societies from the SCCS show former
presence of slavery.
In contrast to Amazonians and several African farmers, island
horticulturalists such as those in Oceania show greater status
and wealth differentiation. Big-men and great-men leaders typ-
ical of these societies possess greater political influence, larger
gardens, and more material wealth than do other group mem-
bers (Turke and Betzig 1985). These societies are found where
resources are densely concentrated, predictable, and defendable
Gurven et al. Intergenerational Wealth Transmission among Horticulturalists
and where surpluses are created. Surpluses are generated by
labor recruitment efforts, competitive feasting, and redistri-
bution of prestige items such as shell bands and domesticated
pigs (Hayden 1996). Classic ethnographies of Trobriand Is-
landers (Malinowski 1922; Weiner 1976), Samoans (Gilson
1970), and Enga (Wiessner 2002) describe big men, the priv-
ileges that accrue to chiefly lineages, and competitive yam ex-
changes and feasts. For example, residential and yam houses
belonging to Trobriander chiefs are larger and more ornately
decorated than commoner houses. Chiefly status permits the
right to have multiple wives, engage in kula exchanges, and
avoid certain food prohibitions (Weiner 1988).
Other groups show a mixed egalitarian and ranked strat-
ification social structure, such as the Dani of Western Papua,
where leaders accumulate wealth and prestige but inequality
does not carry over to land ownership and farming. Instead,
Dani big men largely help organize rituals and war parties
(Heider 1990). Evidence for highly complex horticulturalist
societies is scant (but see Erickson 2000). Several kingdoms
in Africa were highly structured and prestige based, such as
the Asante of southern Ghana, a conquest state with kings
and chiefs who had lavish courts maintained by the trading
with Europeans of gold, kola nuts, and slaves (Fortes 1969).
But even among the Asante, land was held by matrilineages
for group members to farm as needed.
Sedentism, resource concentration and predictability, sur-
plus production and storage, and higher population density
have all been linked to greater inequality in subsistence pop-
ulations (Carneiro 1970; Hayden 1995; Testart 1982; Upham
1990). An often-cited but incomplete idea is that agriculture
permits a surplus sufficient to maintain nonproductive classes
such as warriors, priests, and politicians (Childe 1954) and
inequalities beyond those due to age, sex, and abilities. Surplus
production, however, is likely an endogenous outcome of
other inequality-generating factors, such as differential access
to patchy, predictable, and accumulable resources. When ter-
ritorial resources are concentrated in dense, high-quality
patches, they become “economically defensible,” leading to
monopolization by emergent elites (Boone 1992; Brown 1964;
Dyson-Hudson and Smith 1978). Storage and accumulation
of material resources over time can lead to greater disparities
in wealth than exist when resources are transient. Leaders or
“managers” may arise to organize raiding parties, redistribute
resources, or deal with localized resource stress (Flannery
1972; Smith and Choi 2007). According to the “agency” ap-
proach to inequality emergence (Wiessner 2002), upstarts or
“aggrandizers” strive for influence by controlling access to
resources or by extracting labor from others through debt
cycles or coercion (Arnold 1995; Boone 1992). Nonelites,
however, are not necessarily deprived of resources. In a system
of “managerial mutualism,” subordinates may also benefit
when provided goods by elites who compete for prestige and
supporters (Boone 1992, 1998).
This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:57:48 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
53
Intergenerational Transmission
Kinship is the basis for navigating social life and the flow of
goods and services in horticultural societies. One-third of
horticultural societies in the SCCS show patrilineal inheri-
tance, one-fourth show matrilineal inheritance, and one-
fourth show bilateral inheritance (table 1). More egalitarian
horticulturalists tend to show bilateral descent, such as among
the Gainj (Johnson 1982). One-third of societies show no
formal property rights or inheritance rules; among those that
do, the most common pattern is for property to be distributed
relatively equally among sons (table 1). Among more egali-
tarian horticultural societies, there is very little wealth to in-
herit, except perhaps land in more circumscribed areas and
occasional wealth items. Personal items may be burned or
buried with the deceased, while large or expensive items, such
as canoes, knives, and shotguns, are usually divided among
surviving family members (Murphy and Murphy 1974). In-
heritance of these items may be sex biased (Crocker 1990),
although women’s items may also pass to daughters-in-law
instead of daughters (Bohannan and Bohannan 1953). Land
privileges are often granted through usufruct. As long as crops
are growing in a field, permission must often be asked before
others may use the field (Bergman 1980). In the nonegali-
tarian Polynesian horticultural societies, property and land
rights are often organized strictly along descent group lines.
When land is continuously rotated with long fallow periods,
individual private ownership and land inheritance may not
be sensible. Instead, descent groups often own communal
land, and distribution of access rights to member households
is coordinated by lineage heads (Bohannan and Bohannan
1953; Holmes 1974).
Ethnographies report that sons and sometimes daughters
benefit from the social position of parents, particularly fathers
(Heider 1990). Leadership positions, however, are not usually
strictly heritable but remain in part dependent on individual
skills and personality (Wiessner 2002). Positions, however,
may be held by other family members. It is important to
acknowledge that traditional structures of horticulturalist so-
cieties with a history of chiefly lineages and kingdoms, such
as the Asanti, Ganda, and Shambala, are no longer intact. It
is possible that remaining horticulturalist societies, especially
those represented here, show less inheritance of individual-
level privilege and rights. However, even among the African
kingdoms mentioned above and the Classic Maya (Edmonson
1979), land was not held privately and most inhabitants were
commoners with communal access to farm land through their
lineages.
Sample and Methods
Overview
We present data from four horticultural populations: rural
Dominicans, Mandinka, Pimbwe, and Tsimane. Dominicans
are rural peasants of Dominica in the Caribbean. The Man-
 54
dinka and Pimbwe are dry-land farmers from the Gambia
and Tanzania, respectively, and the Tsimane are Amazonian
rain forest horticulturalist-foragers from Bolivia. Our reliance
on only four groups means that our sample cannot be rep-
resentative of horticulturalists either today or from the past.
The majority of the societies from the SCCS in table 1 come
from the insular Pacific (29%), Africa (18%), and South
America (28%). Today, many horticultural groups occupy
marginalized areas in the humid tropics and arid regions
where prospects for intensive agriculture are poor. Availability
of wealth data varies among our sample populations, as do
the levels of market integration and other indicators of ac-
culturation during the study periods. The largest number of
wealth measures exists for Pimbwe and Tsimane, and so we
devote more attention to these societies.
Rural Dominicans
Ethnographic background. Bwa Mawego, one of the least de-
veloped villages on the windward side of Dominica, contains
about 700 full- and part-time residents of mixed African,
European, and island-Carib descent (Quinlan 2005). Eco-
nomic activities include subsistence taro-based horticulture,
fishing, bay leaf oil production, banana production, shop-
keeping, and limited wage labor. Average annual household
income in Bwa Mawego is currently about EC$5,000
(US$1,850). Opportunities for education are limited. About
30% of villagers born between 1955 and 1986 have attended
“high school” equivalent to ninth and tenth grade in the
United States; older adults have less education. The popu-
lation is relatively healthy for the Caribbean region. Kinship
and family are the foundation of economic, social, and re-
productive behavior, with almost everyone in the village re-
lated by blood or marriage. Many households consist of sev-
eral women and their children; conjugal, single-mother, and
other alternative styles are also common (Quinlan and Flinn
2005). Several households of closely related kin often live
together in a family compound. There are several large pa-
trilineages and many small lineages; matrilineages are not rec-
ognized. Patrilineal descent provides individuals with access
to ancestral family lands through usufruct, which can be ad-
vantageous to individuals whose immediate family does not
own land.
Wealth measures. Land is the basis of economic production
in Bwa Mawego. Bwa den (bay leaf Pimenta racemosa L.) is
the primary source of cash. Villagers extract bay oil from bwa
den and then sell it to a cooperative that in turn sells the oil
to global distributors as an ingredient in soap and perfume.
Most villagers either own or work bwa den for income. Bwa
den field sizes (in acres) owned by living and recently dead
residents of the village who were aged 25⫹ in 2005 were
estimated on the basis of interviews with two groups of locals
(Quinlan and Hagen 2008). Interrater reliability across the
two groups was moderate (Cronbach’s a p .68 ), and reli-
This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:57:48 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
ability tests based on kinship and sex suggest little bias in
field size estimation. Although women can and do own bwa
den, interrater reliability scores suggest that women’s claims
to land are somewhat ambiguous.
Mandinka
Ethnographic background. Four villages in the West Kiang dis-
trict of the Gambia were first studied by physician Ian
McGregor in 1950, chosen because of their remote location
and poor health profile (McGregor 1991). The residents are
mostly Mandinka, though the samples also include a minority
of Jola, former slaves of Mandinka. During the study period,
all villages practiced horticulture, with rice as the main sub-
sistence crop by the end of the study period. Additionally,
groundnuts were grown as a cash crop. Rights to land use
reside largely with men, and these rights are inherited patri-
lineally; however, women do the bulk of the subsistence farm-
ing and may occasionally own their own rice fields and pass
them to their daughters. Residence patterns are patrilocal, but
mobility is low so that most women marry within their natal
village. Transport links to other regions of the Gambia were
relatively poor during McGregor’s observation period, though
they have improved considerably over the past few decades.
Few individuals were educated until the late 1970s, when a
primary school was established in Keneba. Before the primary
school, only a few boys would have been sent away to receive
an Islamic education. In 1975, the Dunn Nutrition Unit
(DNU) set up a permanent research station and medical clinic
in Keneba, the largest village. The clinic had an immediate
effect on child mortality rates, while morbidity was less af-
fected (Rayco-Solon et al. 2004). Fertility, however, has only
recently started to decline, despite the availability of contra-
ception at the clinic. Before 1975, both fertility and mortality
were high: women averaged seven children, and more than
40% died by age 5 (Billewicz and McGregor 1981). Polygyny
was high, with most men acquiring more than one wife by
the time they reached late middle age. Men married much
later than women (mean age at first birth was 18 for women
but 31 for men) and therefore reproduced until much older
ages.
Wealth measures. Given the exclusive focus of McGregor and
the DNU on health and mortality, data exist for only two
forms of embodied wealth: anthropometric status and fertil-
ity/RS. We use data only from individuals who were alive and
reproduced in the pre-DNU period because of the substantial
influence of the DNU clinic. Anthropometric data were col-
lected between 1950 and 1980. Only individuals who reached
the age of 18 years were included in the analysis; average
weights were calculated for each person on the basis of re-
peated measurements. RS data are based on births occurring
before 1975 and calculated for only those individuals who
reached the age of 15 years before 1975. Age controls were
included for individuals to account for those who died or
Gurven et al. Intergenerational Wealth Transmission among Horticulturalists
were censored before the end of their reproductive period, as
was a control for birth cohort. RS was defined as the number
of children surviving to age 5, and children censored before
the age of 5 were discounted according to their age-specific
probability of surviving to 5 years. Fertility and mortality data
were available from the demographic surveillance system,
which has recorded all births and deaths since 1950, supple-
mented by birth histories collected from those who began
reproducing before 1950. Only two of the four villages were
included in the RS analysis because demographic data were
thought to be underreported in the other two villages in the
early years of the study.
Pimbwe
Ethnographic background. The Pimbwe of the Rukwa Valley
(Tanzania) are mostly subsistence farmers who also seasonally
hunt, fish, and collect honey (Borgerhoff Mulder 2009). Until
Tanzanian independence (1963), the Pimbwe were subject to
internecine war and a chiefly system. Chiefly and other high-
ranking positions were transmitted to a sister’s son, although
inheritance sparked bitter disputes (Willis 1966). Below the
chiefly levels, Pimbwe society is eminently egalitarian, with a
virulent system of witchcraft accusations and counteraccu-
sations serving to dissuade anyone from rising above the
crowd (Paciotti and Hadley 2003) and with social order now
maintained at least in part by a local vigilante organization
(Paciotti and Borgerhoff Mulder 2004) and in part by the
organs of a modernizing state.
Pimbwe have no electricity and limited access to clean wa-
ter, all-weather roads, and (since 2006) mobile phones (Pa-
ciotti et al. 2005). Primary schooling has been available in
almost all villages since the early 1970s, although schools are
not well maintained or funded. The Pimwbe have little ac-
cumulated wealth. Less than 10% of the population own
smallstock (goats), which are generally used as cash savings
and sold only in times of need; the same is true for the more
commonly raised poultry. Families have rights to land through
cultivation, but land is largely freely available. Production is
limited by the availability of family labor and the health of
adult household members. Family illness is cited by Pimbwe
as one of the primary reasons for deficits in food production.
One source of cash among the Pimbwe is the sale of maize
and other cash crops such as sunflower, rice, and peanuts.
Average earnings from cash crops are very low and show high
interannual variation due to vagaries of weather and crop
damage by wildlife and pests. Some men earn income from
a seasonal craft or trade, such as fishing, hunting, honey pro-
duction, carpentry, dispensing traditional medicine, providing
witch doctor services, trading old clothes, and manual labor.
The primary source of women’s additional income is brewing
and distilling of maize, products sold either privately or in
one of the village bars.
Wealth measures. Analyses based on six surveys from 1995 to
This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:57:48 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
55
2006 are focused on the villagers of Mirumba. The sample
includes all individuals aged 15⫹ ever interviewed. Given the
lack of privately owned material wealth such as land, the
vagaries of livestock raising, and the near-complete erosion
of the traditional chiefly statuses, wealth in Mpimbwe is best
thought of as deriving from health, strength, fertility, and
control of (children’s) labor. Intergenerational transmission
is therefore investigated for weight, RS, household wealth, and
farming skill. RS is defined as the number of offspring sur-
viving to age 5 among women aged 45⫹ and men aged 55⫹.
Children who had not yet reached 5 years of age were weighted
according to their probability of surviving this period (.82).
Household wealth is measured as the currency value of the
sum total of household items, including the materials of the
house itself. Farming skill is measured as the number of
months a house was with maize in its granary. Land is freely
available and not strictly heritable, and so a household’s suc-
cess in providing food throughout the year is due not to
differential land ownership (although cultivated land was con-
trolled for in the measure) but rather to skills in farming,
storage, and resource management; dependency ratios are
closely correlated with land under cultivation. Maize pro-
duction and annual availability are subject to stochastic
shocks, such as inclement weather, changing river courses,
elephants, insect pests, and theft. Although not all of these
shocks can be directly countered, skill, foresight, knowledge,
wise planning, hard work, and good social relations with
neighbors and kin can help reduce the risks of spending many
months without food in the granary.
Tsimane
Ethnographic background. Tsimane are a subsistence-based so-
ciety of more than 8,000 forager-horticulturalists living in
more than 50 villages with fairly minimal external market
interactions. Horticultural fields containing a mixture of plan-
tains, rice, corn, and sweet manioc are fairly small (!1 ha)
and are left to fallow after several years of use, with new fields
created based on availability and ownership based on usufruct.
In more acculturated villages, fields are often larger because
rice is also sold as a cash crop. Fishing is common in all
Tsimane villages located near water rivers, oxbow lakes, or
lagoons. Hunting with shotguns, rifles, and bow and arrow
is common in interfluvial villages. Mobility was more com-
mon a generation ago, and with high fertility (total fertility
rate p 9), extended families are often spread across numerous
communities. Villages are composed of clusters of related
households who often pool resources and labor.
Traditionally, there were no official leaders; older men and
shamans wielded community-wide influence (Daillant 1994;
von Rueden, Gurven, and Kaplan 2008). Very few shamans
remain today. In recent decades, Tsimane villages have
adopted a system of elected chiefs (corregidores) and other
officials in larger villages for representation purposes and in-
teraction with outside interests. Chiefs wield no real power;
 56
their main tasks are to hold and conduct meetings in the
event of conflicts, help organize community labor events, and
represent village interests in transactions with outsiders. They
are usually young or middle-aged men fluent in Spanish and
with some experience dealing with Bolivian nationals. In vil-
lages where loggers make deals with Tsimane, chiefs and their
families benefit more than other families. There is little ac-
cumulated wealth among Tsimane, and no consistent, robust
associations between market access and wealth inequality have
been demonstrated (Godoy et al. 2004). Items of value include
shotguns and rifles used for hunting, axes, radios, watches,
bicycles, and dugout canoes. Income is earned through spo-
radic wage labor opportunities with loggers, merchants, and
ranchers, while a small number of mostly men have been
trained as bilingual elementary education teachers. Another
source of wealth includes domesticated animals such as chick-
ens, ducks, and, in some rare cases, pigs and cows. Chickens
are often raised for consumption and sometimes for trade.
Pigs and cows are used for barter and also for consumption
during festivals. After death, a person’s belongings are usually
burned or buried with the person, although expensive durable
items such as shotguns are passed down to a relative (usually
a son).
Wealth measures. Data exist for eight types of wealth covering
the somatic-knowledge, material, and social domains that
comprise key components of Tsimane production and cultural
success. These include RS, body size, cultural knowledge,
hunting success, household wealth, field labor networks, and
alliances. Measures are constructed from data collected from
ongoing fieldwork as part of the Tsimane Health and Life
History Project (2002–2008). RS includes number of children
surviving to age 5 among women age 40⫹ and men age 45⫹,
with right-censored cases discounted by the average proba-
bility of surviving to age 5. Body size is measured as body
weight wearing light clothing taken during medical visits using
a portable weigh scale. Cultural knowledge is measured from
self-reported possession of a large number of sex-specific cul-
tural skills covering economic production, tool and craft man-
ufacture, song and story repertoire, and sociality. Each per-
son’s score is the proportion of sex-specific skills held (total
53 for women, 67 for men). Hunting success, measured by
the average number of calories gained per hour spent hunting,
is based on a combination of focal follows and interviews of
hunters and is reported in Smith et al. (2010, this issue).
Household wealth describes the sum monetary value (based
on the buying price in the nearest town) of shotguns, rifles,
watches, radios, bicycles, and domesticated animals among
all nuclear family members.
Cooperative labor partnerships are measured as the number
of helpers in horticultural tasks during the previous year,
based on interviews in 11 remote villages. Larger communities
that engage in more cash-cropping (mostly rice) were ex-
cluded from the sample. People paid in money, goods, or
farm product for their labor were not included in the tally.
This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:57:48 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
Only father-son dyads were considered here. Alliances were
measured according to a ranking procedure where local raters
ranked sets of eight photos of their peers on the basis of who
would have more allies help them in the event of a conflict
(von Rueden, Gurven, and Kaplan 2008). A block design
insured that no two photos appeared together in the same
array more than once. The range of possible scores was 8–64.
Methodological Limitations
Table 4 presents the sample size of parent (F1) and offspring
(F2) dyads by wealth type for each of the four populations.
Sample sizes vary substantially and tend to be larger for more
easily measured variables, ranging from 41 for hunting skill
among Tsimane to 1,274 for weight among Mandinka.
Values for several F2 wealth measures are paired with the
midpoint value of their biological parents. This does not mean
that children consistently coresided with both of their bio-
logical parents. Our choice for F1 and F2, however, is the best
metric for capturing intergenerational transmission in social
systems where children may live with one, the other, or both
parents for at least the majority of their period of dependence,
in which there are no strict rules of intergenerational trans-
mission, and in which children learn primarily from the adults
in their household.
The reliance on F1-F2 dyads requires information on two
generations. For many individuals, death before study and
residence in a nonstudy village leave many unpaired individ-
uals. These are probably the largest possible sources of bias.
Trait values for complete F1 and F2 generations were compared
with those remaining after removing unpaired individuals.
The most common bias favors stable group members and
disfavors immigrants or highly mobile individuals; the re-
peated panel design of the Mandinka, Pimbwe, and Tsimane
studies helps to reduce this bias.
While the four populations lived fairly traditional lifestyles
during the data collection periods, each has had a history of
interaction with other populations, national society, and in-
creasing integration to the market. Traditional subsistence ac-
tivities occur in the context of increasing formal education
of the current generation, cash-cropping, and wage labor.
Novel wealth types, such as competency in the national lan-
guage or years of formal schooling, were not analyzed here
because of the rapid pace of change. To some extent, we
attempted to control for some of the effects of acculturation.
Among Tsimane, where economic activities can vary in dif-
ferent parts of their territory, we added a “region” variable
to regressions to help control for both environmental varia-
tion and acculturation. Statistical methods for computing
wealth elasticity (b) for each wealth type and population are
described in the CA⫹ online supplement “Estimating the
Inheritance of Wealth in Premodern Societies” in the online
edition of Current Anthropology.
Gurven et al. Intergenerational Wealth Transmission among Horticulturalists 57

Table 2. Judgments of a exponents for horticulture societies in the Cobb-Douglas production function
of household well-being

Wealth type

Population Somatic Knowledge Embodieda Material Relational

Dominica .30 .20 .50 .20 .30

Mandinka .40 .15 .55 .20 .25
Pimbwe .40 .20 .60 .30 .10
Tsimane .25 .20 .45 .15 .40
Average .34 .19 .53 .21 .26
Standard deviation .07 .03 .06 .06 .13
a
Embodied wealth combines somatic wealth and knowledge-based wealth.

Results amount of variation in our judgments for somatic and knowl-

edge-based a’s.3
Alphas (a’s) from Production Function
Table 2 presents each researcher’s judgment of the relative Wealth Inequality
importance of somatic (s), knowledge (k), material (m), and Table 3 provides several common measures of inequality for
relational (r) capital for overall production or cultural success, each population-specific wealth type. These include the stan-
hereafter referred to as “household well-being” (w; see Bor- dard deviation, the coefficient of variation, and the Gini co-
gerhoff Mulder et al. 2009). For comparability across the pro- efficient. We focus attention on the Gini coefficient because
duction systems and to reduce ambiguity, we combine somatic of its unit-free properties and wide usage. The Gini coeffi-
and knowledge wealth as embodied (e) wealth (Kaplan 1996).
The relative importance of different types of capital is de- 3. We briefly speculate on a few notable differences in a: Pimbwe
scribed by the a’s (alphas) from the Cobb-Douglas produc- scored the highest for material wealth and the lowest for relational wealth,
perhaps owing to the highly uneven pace of integration and accumulation
tion equation w p A # E aeM amR ar ⫹ d, where ae ⫹ am ⫹
of human capital. While strong, healthy bodies are critical for successful
ar p 1 (see Borgerhoff Mulder et al. 2009).2 Given the im- food production and mate selection among Tsimane, their somatic wealth
pressionistic nature of these judgments, we do not attempt a scored the lowest; overall well-being, especially during critical times of
to explain small differences in a but instead highlight several need, may be affected more by variability in social networks than by
differences in somatic or knowledge-based wealth.
general patterns. Consistent with the typological descriptions
of wealth outlined in “Wealth,” material wealth does not ap-
pear to be a substantial component of household well-being,
contributing an average of only one-fifth (0.21) of total wealth
importance. Material wealth was judged to be the least im-
portant wealth type among all four populations. Embodied
wealth accounts for a substantial one-half (0.53) of well-being.
Two-thirds of this is somatic capital, and the remaining third
is knowledge. Finally, the a for relational social capital, con-
stitutes, on average, one-fourth (0.26) of the total wealth input
exponents. Table 2 reflects our impressions from “Wealth”
that emphasized the importance of relational capital for cul-
tural success, even (or especially) among egalitarian horti-
culturalists, and the lower importance of material capital.
Only hunter-gatherers show a higher mean a for relational
capital and a lower a for material capital (see Smith et al.
2010). Figure 1 illustrates the a’s for all horticultural popu-
lations in a ternary plot. Despite the geographic, ecological,
and cultural variation in our sample, there was a fairly low Figure 1. Ternary plot of a p {e, m, n) for embodied, material,
and relational wealth. The a’s describe the proportion of overall
2. A is a positive constant; E, M, and R are a household’s embodied, household well-being due to each type of wealth. Circles refer
material, and relational wealth, respectively; and d represents exogenous to horticultural populations, and the triangle represents the av-
shocks to a household’s wealth. erage for all four populations.

This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:57:48 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 58 Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010

Table 3. Mean level of each wealth variable and intrapopulation age-adjusted inequality as measured by standard
deviation (SD), coefficient of variation (CV), and Gini coefficient

Inequality measure
Wealth class, group, Mean
and wealth type Mean SD CV Gini N age

Embodied wealth:
Mandinka:
Weight 54.4 7.1 .13 .073 2,355 34
Reproductive success 3.7 2.3 .62 .328 1,935 43
Pimbwe:
Weight 56.7 8.2 .14 .079 395 33
Farming skill 4.4 2.4 .55 .308 507 43
Reproductive success 5.63 1.94 .34 .190 1,041 38
Tsimane:
Hunting returns 1,190.2 877.0 .74 .371 40 37
Cultural knowledge .7 .1 .14 .076 265 35
Weight 59.0 9.2 .15 .087 1,033 36
Grip strength 172.0 79.6 .46 .263 1,249 36
Reproductive success 7.09 2.5 .35 .190 1,288 38
Average .36 .196
Material wealth:
Dominicans:
Land .3 .4 1.56 .671 315 ...
Pimbwe:
Household wealth 176.5 212.4 1.20 .563 614 40
Tsimane:
Household wealth 4,424 3,328 .75 .326 361 39
Average 1.17 .520
Relational wealth:
Tsimane:
Field labor partners 3.7 2.2 .58 .315 234 38
Alliances 38.1 9.4 .25 .141 130 38
Average .42 .228

cients for the 15 horticulturalist wealth measures range from
near 0 to more than 0.6, with a mean of 0.265 (e p 0.20,
m p 0.52, r p 0.23). When weighted by the importance of
each wealth type to population-specific wealth (based on the
a’s), as well as by the inverse of their estimated variances (to
account for the differing degrees of precision of the various
estimates), the mean Gini across wealth classes dropped to
0.21. Material wealth consistently shows the highest levels of
inequality, on par with income inequality in the United States
(0.463 in 2007). We highlight some notable patterns by wealth
type. Material wealth has the highest average Gini (0.52), while
body weight has the lowest (0.08). Ginis for RS (0.24) and
skill/productivity (0.25) are intermediate. We hesitate to com-
pare inequality levels among societies, given the variable num-
ber of wealth categories for each population. Only among the
Tsimane do wealth data exist for all categories, resulting in
an a-weighted Gini of 0.17.
Intergenerational Wealth Elasticity (b)
Table 4 summarizes the estimate, the standard error, and the
statistical significance of the transmission coefficient between
parental wealth and offspring wealth (hereafter referred to as
b) by wealth type and population, as determined from mul-
tiple regression analyses described in the introductory paper
in this special section (Bowles, Smith, and Borgerhoff Mulder
2010, in this issue). Figure 2 illustrates several examples. Em-
bodied wealth is based on 10 measures from three societies,
material wealth is based on three measures from three soci-
eties, and relational wealth is based on two measures from
only one society. The overall b for horticulturalists, weighted
by the importance (a) of each wealth type in promoting
household well-being, is 0.18.
Embodied wealth. The mean b for embodied wealth for hor-
ticulturalists is 0.17 (table 4). Measures include body weight,
grip strength, RS, and hunting performance. Parent-offspring
elasticities for body weight are the strongest of all b’s, varying
from 0.25 to 0.39. Given the relatively large b’s for weight, it
is surprising that the b for grip strength is very small. Grip
strength is correlated with weight, given Tsimane leanness
(mean adult body mass index p 23). A similar high b for
weight but low b for grip strength was also observed among
the Hadza (Smith et al. 2010).
The b’s for RS were low, consistently !0.13. Additional
analysis by child (F2) sex, however, revealed consistently larger
b’s for sons than for daughters (parent-son vs. parent-daugh-

This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:57:48 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Gurven et al. Intergenerational Wealth Transmission among Horticulturalists 59

Table 4. Wealth elasticities (b) for different wealth types among four horticultural populations

Wealth class, population,

and wealth type Transmission (b) SE P N pairs (F2)

Embodied wealth:
Mandinka:
Weight .391 .041 .000 1,274
Reproductive success .088 .086 .309 967
Pimbwe:
Farming skill ⫺.015 .097 .875 217
Weight .377 .096 .000 148
Reproductive success ⫺.057 .107 .592 599
Tsimane:
Hunting returns .384 .130 .003 26
Cultural knowledge .111 .094 .240 181
Weight .253 .069 .000 383
Grip strength .070 .042 .094 490
Reproductive success .128 .073 .079 849
Average .173 .047 .001 568
Material wealth:
Dominicans:
Land .137 .140 .327 62
Pimbwe:
Household wealth .107 .318 .735 283
Tsimane:
Household wealth .024 .071 .731 110
Average .090 .087 .309 152
Relational wealth:
Tsimane:
Field labor partners .181 .106 .086 67
Alliances .338 .103 .001 45
Average .260 .106 .020 56.0

Note. Averages are arithmetic. P values were calculated from two-tailed tests of hypothesis that true b for a given
row equals 0.

ter b Ⳳ SE: Mandinka, 0.093 Ⳳ 0.083 vs. 0.033 Ⳳ 0.046;
Pimbwe, 0.182 Ⳳ 0.349 vs. ⫺0.042 Ⳳ 0.133; Tsimane,
0.225 Ⳳ 0.115 vs. 0.064 Ⳳ 0.047). Given the lower variance
in RS among females than males in the mildly polygynous
Mandinka, Pimbwe, and Tsimane, women may find it easier
to obtain mates and support offspring, regardless of parental
RS. Although it might be expected that increased competition
with more siblings might reduce sons’ RS, larger kin groups,
especially of older sibs, might provide additional critical sup-
port in finding mates. A variety of alternative caretakers may
also help improve child survivorship relatively cheaply be-
cause of depreciating costs of babysitting and other care ac-
tivities. Parents with greater RS may themselves come from
larger sibships, which will provide a larger set of available
cross-cousins to marry in societies, such as Tsimane, where
the ideal mate is a cross-cousin.
Unlike the case for Tsimane hunting (discussed in Smith
et al. 2010), there is no intergenerational transmission for
Pimbwe farming skill. Even though farming production was
averaged across multiple years to reduce the effects of annual
variability, it is possible that stochastic factors in an unpre-
dictable and pest-ridden environment overwhelm heritably
transmitted knowledge. The farming skill measure also com-
bines knowledge with planning and work effort. Each of these
may be transmitted differently, and farming knowledge itself
might be widely available. Tsimane cultural knowledge shows
low intergenerational transmission, with b p 0.11. Many
common skills are readily obtained by Tsimane during de-
velopment and early adulthood; individual abilities and ex-
perience may swamp the effects of informal parent-offspring
social transmission.
Material wealth. The overall b for material wealth in this
sample is 0.09 (table 4). Data exist only for household wealth
and land. Household wealth showed no relationship. Among
Pimbwe and Tsimane, there is little household property trans-
mitted directly between parent and offspring households, es-
pecially because most household items last for only a few
years. Houses themselves survive for only about a decade.
Among Pimbwe, a fierce ideology of self-reliance limits in-
terhousehold sharing and kin support. When asked about
support received by others for food, school fees, and medical
bills, Pimbwe react with disgust, insisting on their indepen-
dence. Fear of sharing and dependence stems from deep con-
cerns with witchcraft that pervade all aspects of Pimbwe social
life. Help among households is somewhat low but more forth-

This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:57:48 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 60 Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010

Figure 2. Offspring (F2) and parental (F1) wealth, adjusted for age. A,
Weight among Mandinka (b p 0.391). B, Household wealth among
Pimbwe (b p 0.107). C, Allies among Tsimane (b p 0.338). D, Land
holdings among Dominicans (b p 0.137). Fathers’ age controls had no
effect on the elasticity estimates for land holding in Dominica and were
dropped to improve statistical precision.

coming among Tsimane. While complaints about the inad-
equacy of help received from others are common, there is no
similar ideology or concern about witchcraft. Tsimane ac-
cusations of sorcery are usually directed toward outgroup
members and, if anything, are more common when people
refuse to share.
We expected that transmission of material wealth to Do-
minican sons would be more substantial because of loose
patrilineal inheritance norms (Quinlan and Flinn 2005).
However, we found little evidence of intergenerational in-
heritance of land among Dominicans, with b p 0.14. Sons
are often viewed as risky investments, and relatives other than

This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:57:48 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Gurven et al. Intergenerational Wealth Transmission among Horticulturalists
children usually contribute many years of agricultural labor
to these plots. It is possible that these other relatives may
inherit land through oblique transmission. Parents sell bay
leaves and use the cash to finance children’s education and
migration. Bay leaf farming is recognized as difficult work,
so productive parents may use their profits to provide other
opportunities for children, although parents’ bwa den plot
size is not significantly associated with the probability of chil-
dren’s migration.
Relational wealth. Our only measures of relational wealth are
for the Tsimane: number of helpers assisting in agricultural
field activities and number of male alliances during conflicts.
Fathers with more helpers were somewhat more likely to have
sons with more helpers (b p 0.18). While this relationship is
not driven by the set of data points represented by parents
and offspring with no helpers, it is weakened by excluding
either shared individuals who help both F1 and F2 or help
exchanged between F1 and F2.
Allies are an important resource during interpersonal con-
flicts with other Tsimane and with Bolivian colonists, mer-
chants, or loggers. The number of named allies in the event
of a conflict is highly correlated with several measures of social
status and respect (von Rueden, Gurven, and Kaplan 2008).
The relationship between the number of parental and off-
spring allies was stronger than that found among labor part-
ners (b p 0.34). This result was not driven by parents and
offspring naming each other.
Discussion
Material wealth was considered the least important contrib-
utor of household well-being across the four horticultural
societies in our study, while embodied and relational wealth
were considered the most important (table 2). On average,
intergenerational transmission of material wealth was low,
even though inequality was relatively high (table 3). Embodied
and relational wealth are both important determinants of
well-being among horticulturalists. Physically robust and
healthy bodies are needed to produce and defend resources,
acquire the repertoire of cultural skills, and attract mates and
allies. Higher transmission coefficients were found for somatic
wealth (except RS) than for knowledge or skill. Cultural
knowledge and information may be easily obtainable from a
wide variety of kin, peers, and others, and/or individual ex-
perience and abilities may trump the value of any specialized
traditions or knowledge passed from parents to children. So-
cial networks are also important to horticulturalist household
well-being. The number and quality of kin and allies mediate
access to resources and mates and to support when conflicts
erupt or when one is disabled. Although based on data from
only one population, the level of intergenerational transmis-
sion for relational capital is nontrivial, with transmission co-
efficients averaging 0.26. A similar level of wealth elasticity is
found for embodied capital (average p 0.17).
This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:57:48 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
61
Despite the implication that intergenerational wealth elas-
ticities are higher for the types of wealth that are more im-
portant in each society, we found no significant correlation
between our set of 15 a’s and b’s (r p 0.12, P p .662); this
contrasts with the significant correlation reported for the
larger sample of hunter-gatherers, horticulturalists, pastor-
alists, and intensive farmers (Borgerhoff Mulder et al. 2009;
Smith et al. 2010). However, the relationship for horticul-
turalists improves after eliminating RS measures, which
showed consistently very low b’s (r p 0.38, P p .217).
The nontrivial b’s and measured inequality are remarkable,
given the roughly egalitarian nature of these four horticultural
societies. Overall wealth transmission (mean b weighted by
a) for horticulturalists is low (0.18), very close to that cal-
culated for hunter-gatherers (0.19), and about half of that
reported for pastoralists and intensive farmers (see Borgerhoff
Mulder et al. 2010, in this issue; Shenk et al. 2010, in this
issue; Smith et al. 2010). The importance of such low b’s,
however, should not be underestimated: a b of 0.2 implies
that a child born into the top wealth decile of the population
is 3.6 times more likely to remain in the top decile than is a
child whose parents were in the bottom decile (as discussed
in Bowles, Smith, and Borgerhoff Mulder 2010). The wealth
elasticities for each of the three wealth classes are also similar
among horticulturalists and hunter-gatherers, as is the overall
a-weighted Gini index measuring wealth inequality (0.27 for
horticulturalists vs. 0.25 for hunter-gatherers).
Given the b’s in table 4, we can say that the steady state
levels of variance in logarithm of wealth (a standard unit-free
measure of inequality) range from 1.004 # jl2 (material
wealth) to 1.034 # jl2 (relational wealth), where jl2 is a mea-
sure of the variance in wealth shocks in one generation and
the coefficient multiplier is (1 ⫺ b 2)⫺1 (see Borgerhoff Mulder
et al. 2009). Thus, at equilibrium, there is greater inequality
in the wealth measures that are of greater utility to horti-
culturalists, that is, relational and embodied. Thus, not all
types of wealth are equally distributed and inherited across
generations. Another important conclusion here is that the
domestication of plants alone does not lead to greater in-
equality. Limited access to storable or defendable resources
such as land, technology, or animals is a necessary ingredient
for high levels of inequality to emerge. Such limitation is
minimal in our sample but is common among intensive ag-
riculturalists and pastoralists.
Although our inferences here refer to intact horticultural
societies, our four societies vary in their degree of accultur-
ation and market integration. Each has a history of contact,
conquest, and, to some extent, marginalization. It remains to
be seen how integration into the market economy has and
will continue to impact inequality. Production functions may
include a greater reliance on material wealth and new forms
of human capital, such as formal schooling, proficiency in
national language, and local politics. Relational capital may
include important contacts in distant locations for the pur-
pose of trade, cash-cropping, and wage labor opportunities.
 62
It is likely that novel forms of wealth show greater inequality
than traditional forms expressed in this paper, and so overall
inequality in extant horticultural societies may be more ex-
aggerated than the portrait given here.
The Kuznets hypothesis, proposed to explain differences in
inequality among nations, suggests an inverted U-shaped re-
lationship between economic development and inequality
(Kuznets 1955). At low levels of development, most work in
subsistence agriculture and land rights is based on usufruct.
With increasing market integration, economic inequalities in-
crease as subgroups selectively opt to obtain formal education,
sell produce, trade, and engage in wage labor or service oc-
cupations. At high levels of development, few practice sub-
sistence agriculture, and most, if not all, work for wages.
Presumably, income inequality decreases at higher levels of
economic development, accentuated by social welfare pro-
grams that promote redistribution. The only empirical test of
the Kuznets hypothesis in a small-scale society was done
among the Tsimane and did not lead to consistent, conclusive
results across wealth types or econometric specifications (Go-
doy et al. 2004). Greater inequality requires greater reliance
on limited, predictable, and monopolizable resources, partic-
ularly material wealth. Deliberate social norms that promote
economic redistribution will also dampen inequality. It is
noteworthy that the average Gini index of inequality from
our four populations is similar to that of Scandinavian coun-
tries that employ strong social welfare programs. Sharing
norms based on a risk-sharing foraging economy often re-
main, even if somewhat modified, following economic
change.
Acknowledgments
M. Gurven and H. Kaplan thank the National Science Foun-
dation (NSF; BCS-0422690) and National Institutes of Health/
National Institute on Aging (NIH/NIA; R01AG024119-01) for
funding of Tsimane research. R. Sear would like to thank the
Gambia Scientific Coordinating and Ethical Committees for
access to their data. E. Schniter thanks NSF (0612903) for a
doctoral dissertation grant. R. Quinlan thanks the NSF Cul-
tural Anthropology Program (0650317) for funding Dominica
research. P. Hooper was supported by Howard Hughes Med-
ical Institute through the Program in Interdisciplinary Bio-
logical and Biomedical Sciences at the University of New
Mexico.
References Cited
Arhem, K. 1981. Makuna social organization. Uppsala Studies
in Cultural Anthropology 4. Stockholm: Almqvist &
Wiksell.
Arnold, J. E. 1995. Social inequality, marginalization and eco-
nomic process. In Foundations of social inequality. T. D.
Price and G. M. Feinman, eds. Pp. 87–103. New York:
Plenum.
This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:57:48 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
Bates, D. G. 2001. Human adaptive strategies: ecology, culture
and politics. 2nd edition. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Bellwood, P. 2005. First farmers: the origins of agricultural
societies. Oxford: Blackwell.
Bentley, G., G. Jasienska, and T. Goldberg. 1993. Is the fertility
of agriculturalists higher than that of nonagriculturalists?
Current Anthropology 34:778–785.
Bergman, R. 1980. Amazon economics: the simplicity of Shipibo
Indian wealth. Syracuse, NY: Dellplain Latin American
Studies.
Billewicz, W. Z., and I. A. McGregor. 1981. The demography
of two West African (Gambian) villages, 1951–75. Journal
of Biosocial Science 13:219–240.
Bohannan, L., and P. Bohannan. 1953. The Tiv of central
Nigeria. London: International African Institute.
Boone, J. L. 1992. Competition, conflict and the development
of social hierarchies. In Evolutionary ecology and human
behavior. E. A. Smith and B. Winterhalder, eds. Pp.
301–338. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
———. 1998. The evolution of magnanimity: when is it better
to give than to receive? Human Nature 9:1–21.
Borgerhoff Mulder, M. 2009. Trade-offs and sexual conflict
over women’s fertility preferences in Mpimbwe. American
Journal of Human Biology 21:478–487.
Borgerhoff Mulder, M., S. Bowles, T. Hertz, A. Bell, J. Beise,
G. Clark, I. Fazzio, et al. 2009. Intergenerational wealth
transmission and the dynamics of inequality in small-scale
societies. Science 326:682–688.
Borgerhoff Mulder, M., I. Fazzio, W. Irons, R. L. McElreath,
S. Bowles, A. Bell, T. Hertz, and L. Hazzah. 2010. Pastor-
alism and wealth inequality: revisiting an old question. Cur-
rent Anthropology 50(1):35–48.
Bowles, S., E. A. Smith, and M. Borgerhoff Mulder. 2010. The
emergence and persistence of inequality in premodern so-
cieties: introduction to the special section. Current An-
thropology 51(1):7–17.
Brown, J. L. 1964. The evolution of diversity in avian terri-
torial systems. Wilson Bulletin 76:160–169.
Carneiro, R. 1970. A theory of the origin of the state. Science
169:733–738.
Chagnon, N. 1968. Yanomamo: the fierce people. New York:
Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
———. 1988. Life histories, blood revenge and warfare in a
tribal population. Science 26:985–992.
Childe, V. G. 1954. Early forms of society. In A history of
technology, vol. 1. C. Singer, E. J. Holmyard, A. R. Hall,
and T. I. Williams, eds. Pp. 38–57. Oxford: Clarendon.
Collier, J. F. 1988. Marriage and inequality in classless societies.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Colson, E. 1960. Social organization of the Gwembe Tonga.
Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Conklin, H. C. 1957. Hanunoo agriculture: a report on an
integral system of shifting cultivation in the Phillipines. FAO
Forestry Development Paper, no. 12. Washington, DC:
United Nations.
Gurven et al. Intergenerational Wealth Transmission among Horticulturalists
Crocker, W. H. 1990. The Canela: an ethnographic introduc-
tion. Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology, no. 33.
Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
Daillant, I. 1994. Sens dessus-dessous: organisation sociale et
spatiale des Chimanes d’Amazonie boliviane. PhD thèse,
Université Paris.
Diamond, J. M. 1999. Guns, germs, and steel: the fates of human
societies. New York: W. W. Norton.
Dyson-Hudson, R., and E. A. Smith. 1978. Human territo-
riality: an ecological reassessment. American Anthropologist
80:21–41.
Edmonson, M. S. 1979. Some postclassic questions about the
classic Maya. In Tercera Mesa Redonda de Palenque, vol.
IV. M. G. Robertson and D. C. Jeffers, eds. Pp. 9–18. Mon-
terey, CA: Herald.
Erickson, C. L. 2000. An artificial landscape-scale fishery in
the Bolivian Amazon. Nature 408:190–193.
Flannery, J. G. 1972. The cultural evolution of civilizations.
Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 3:399–426.
Flannery, K. V. 1973. The origins of agriculture. Annual Re-
view of Anthropology 2:271–310.
Flinn, M. 1986. Correlates of reproductive success in a Ca-
ribbean village. Human Ecology 14:225–243.
Fortes, M. 1969. Kinship and the social order. Chicago: Aldine.
Fried, M. 1967. Evolution of political society. New York: Ran-
dom House.
Gilson, R. P. 1970. Samoa 1830 to 1900: the politics of a multi-
cultural community. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
Godoy, R., M. Gurven, E. Byron, V. Reyes-Garcı́a, J. Keough,
V. Vadez, D. Wilkie, et al. 2004. Why don’t markets increase
economic inequalities? Kuznets in the Bush. Human Ecology
32:339–364.
Gurven, M., K. Hill, and H. Kaplan. 2002. From forest to
reservation: transitions in food sharing behavior among the
Ache of Paraguay. Journal of Anthropological Research 58:
93–120.
Gurven, M., H. Kaplan, and M. Gutierrez. 2006. How long
does it take to become a proficient hunter? implications
for the evolution of delayed growth. Journal of Human
Evolution 51:454–470.
Gurven, M., and C. von Rueden. 2006. Hunting, social status
and biological fitness. Social Biology 53:81–99.
Hadley, C. 2004. The costs and benefits of kin: kin networks
and children’s health among the Pimbwe of Tanzania. Hu-
man Nature 15:377–395.
Hadley, C., M. Borgerhoff Mulder, and E. Fitzherbert. 2007.
Seasonal food insecurity and perceived social support in
rural Tanzania. Public Health Nutrition 10:544–551.
Hames, R. 1989. Time, efficiency, and fitness in the Ama-
zonian protein quest. Journal of Economic Anthropology 11:
43–45.
Harris, M. 1977. Cannibals and kings: the origins of culture.
New York: Random House.
Hayden, B. 1995. Pathways to power: principles for creating
socioeconomic inequalities. In Foundations of social in-
This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:57:48 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
63
equality. T. D. Price and G. M. Feinman, eds. Pp. 15–86.
New York: Plenum.
———. 1996. Feasting in prehistoric and traditional societies.
In Food and the status quest: an interdisciplinary perspective.
P. Wiessner and W. Schiefenhövel, eds. Pp. 127–147. Prov-
idence, RI: Berghahn.
Heider, K. G. 1990. Grand Valley Dani: peaceful warriors. 2nd
edition. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Henrich, J., and F. Gil-White. 2001. The evolution of prestige:
freely conferred status as a mechanism for enhancing the
benefits of cultural transmission. Evolution and Human Be-
havior 22:1–32.
Hill, K., and M. Gurven. 2004. Economic experiments to
examine fairness and cooperation among the Ache Indians
of Paraguay. In Foundations of human sociality: economics
experiments in fifteen small-scale societies. J. Henrich, R.
Boyd, S. Bowles, C. Camerer, E. Fehr, and H. Gintis, eds.
Pp. 382–412. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Holmes, L. D. 1974. Samoan village: case studies in cultural
anthropology. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Johnson, A. W., and T. Earle. 1987. The evolution of human
societies: from foraging group to agrarian state. Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press.
Johnson, P. L. 1982. Gainj kinship and social organization.
PhD dissertation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Kaplan, H. S. 1996. A theory of fertility and parental invest-
ment in traditional and modern human societies. Yearbook
of Physical Anthropology 39:91–135.
Keeley, L. H. 1996. War before civilization. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Kirchengast, S., and E. M. Winkler. 1995. Differential repro-
ductive success and body dimensions in Kavango males
from urban and rural areas in northern Namibia. Human
Biology 67:291–309.
———. 1996. Differential fertility and body build in !Kung
San and Kavango females from northern Namibia. Journal
of Biosocial Science 28:193–210.
Knauft, B. M. 1985. Good company and violence: sorcery and
social action in a lowland New Guinea society. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Koptyoff, I., and S. Miers. 1977. “African slavery” as an in-
stitution of marginality. In Slavery in Africa: history and
anthropological perspectives. S. Miers and I. Koptyoff, eds.
Pp. 3–81. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Kracke, W. H. 1978. Force and persuasion: leadership in an
Amazonian society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kuznets, S. 1955. Economic growth and income inequality.
American Economic Review 45:1–28.
Malinowski, B. 1922. Argonauts of the western Pacific. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Maybury-Lewis, D. 1974. Akwe-Shavante society. New York:
Oxford University Press.
McGregor, I. A. 1991. Morbidity and mortality at Keneba, the
Gambia, 1950–75. In Disease and mortality in Sub-Saharan
 64
Africa. R. G. Feacham and D. T. Jamison, eds. Pp. 306–324.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mindlin, B. 1985. Nós Paiter: Os suruı́ de Rondônia. Petrópolis:
Editora Vozes.
Murdock, G. P., and D. R. White. 1969. Standard Cross-
Cultural Sample. Ethnology 9:329–369.
Murphy, Y., and R. F. Murphy. 1974. Women of the forest.
New York: Columbia University Press.
Ohtsuka, R. 1989. Hunting activity and aging among the Gi-
dra Papuans: a biobehavioral analysis. American Journal of
Physical Anthropology 80:31–39.
Paciotti, B., and M. Borgerhoff Mulder. 2004. Sungusungu:
the role of preexisting and evolving social institutions
among Tanzanian vigilante organizations. Human Organ-
ization 63:113–125.
Paciotti, B., and C. Hadley. 2003. The ultimatum game among
sympatric ethnic groups in southwestern Tanzania: ethnic
variation and institutional scope. Current Anthropology 44:
427–432.
Paciotti, B., C. Hadley, C. Holmes, and M. Borgerhoff Mulder.
2005. Grass-roots justice in Tanzania. American Scientist
93:58–64.
Patton, J. 2005. Meat sharing for coalitional support. Evolution
and Human Behavior 26:137–157.
Quinlan, R. 2005. Kinship, gender and migration from rural
Dominica. Migration Letters 2:2–12.
Quinlan, R., and M. Flinn. 2005. Kinship, sex and fitness in
a Caribbean community. Human Nature 16:36–61.
Quinlan, R., and E. Hagen. 2008. New genealogy: it’s not just
for kinship anymore. Field Methods 20:129–154.
Rayco-Solon, P., S. E. Moore, A. J. Fulford, and A. M. Prentice.
2004. Fifty-year mortality trends in three rural African vil-
lages. Tropical Medicine and International Health 9:
1151–1160.
Rindos, D. 1987. The origins of agriculture: an evolutionary
perspective. New York: Academic Press.
Sanday, P. R. 1981. Female power and male dominance. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sear, R. 2006. Size-dependent reproductive success in Gam-
bian men: does height or weight matter more? Social Biology
53:172–188.
Sear, R., N. Allal, and R. Mace. 2004. Height, marriage and
reproductive success in Gambian women. Research in Eco-
nomic Anthropology 23:203–224.
Service, E. R. 1962. Primitive social organization: an evolu-
tionary perspective. New York: Random House.
Shenk, M. K., M. Borgerhoff Mulder, J. Beise, G. Clark, W.
Irons, D. Leonetti, B. S. Low, et al. 2010. Intergenerational
wealth transmission among agriculturalists: foundations of
agrarian inequality. Current Anthropology 50(1):65–83.
Smith, E. A., and J.-K. Choi. 2007. The emergence of in-
equality in small-scale societies: simple scenarios and agent-
based simulations. In Modeling socioecological systems. T.
This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:57:48 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
Kohler and S. van der Leeuw, eds. Pp. 105–119. Santa Fe,
NM: School of American Research.
Smith, E. A., K. Hill, F. W. Marlowe, D. Nolin, P. Wiessner,
M. Gurven, S. Bowles, M. Borgerhoff Mulder, T. Hertz, and
A. Bell. 2010. Wealth transmission and inequality among
hunter-gatherers. Current Anthropology 51(1):19–34.
Stearman, A. M. 1988. Yuquı́ foragers in the Bolivian Amazon:
subsistence strategies, prestige, and leadership in an accul-
turating society. Journal of Anthropological Research 45:
219–244.
Sugiyama, L., and R. Chacon. 2000. Effects of illness and
injury on foraging among the Yora and Shiwar: pathology
risk as adaptive problem. In Human behavior and adap-
tation: an anthropological perspective. L. Cronk, W. Irons,
and N. Chagnon, eds. Pp. 371–395. New York: Aldine de
Gruyter.
Testart, A. 1982. The significance of food storage among
hunter-gatherers: residence patterns, population densities
and social inequalities. Current Anthropology 23:523–537.
Turke, P. W., and L. L. Betzig. 1985. Those who can do: wealth,
status and reproductive success on Ifaluk. Ethology and
Sociobiology 6:79–87.
Upham, S. 1990. The evolution of political systems: sociopolitics
in small-scale sedentary societies. New York: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press.
von Rueden, C., M. Gurven, and H. Kaplan. 2008. The mul-
tiple dimensions of male social status in an Amazonian
society. Evolution and Human Behavior 29:402–415.
Walker, R., K. Hill, H. Kaplan, and G. McMillan. 2002. Age-
dependency in skill, strength and hunting ability among
the Ache of eastern Paraguay. Journal of Human Evolution
42:639–657.
Weiner, A. B. 1976. Women of value, men of renown: new
perspectives in Trobriand exchange. Austin: University of
Texas Press.
———. 1988. The Trobrianders of Papua New Guinea. New
York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Wiessner, P. 1996. Leveling the hunter: constraints on the
status quest in foraging societies. In Food and the status
quest. P. Wiessner and W. Schiefenhövel, eds. Pp. 171–192.
Providence, RI: Berghahn.
———. 2002. The vines of complexity: egalitarian structures
and the institutionalization of inequality among the Enga.
Current Anthropology 43:233–269.
Willis, R. G. 1966. The Fipa and related peoples of south-west
Tanzania and north-east Zambia. Ethnographic Survey of
Africa: East Central Africa, pt. 15. London: International
African Institute.
Wood, J. W. 1994. Dynamics of human reproduction: biology,
biometry and demography. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
Wrangham, R. W., M. L. Wilson, and M. N. Muller. 2006.
Comparative rates of violence in chimpanzees and humans.
Primates 47:14–26.
Ökologix (Wikipedia)
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010 65

Intergenerational Wealth Transmission and

Inequality in Premodern Societies

Intergenerational Wealth Transmission

among Agriculturalists
Foundations of Agrarian Inequality

by Mary K. Shenk, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Jan Beise,1 Gregory

Clark, William Irons, Donna Leonetti, Bobbi S. Low, Samuel
Bowles, Tom Hertz, Adrian Bell, and Patrizio Piraino
CA⫹ Online-Only Supplement: Estimating the Inheritance of Wealth in Premodern Societies

This paper uses data from eight past and present societies practicing intensive agriculture to measure
the transmission of wealth across generations in preindustrial agricultural societies. Focusing on
embodied, material, and relational forms of wealth, we compare levels of wealth between parents
and children to estimate how effectively wealth is transmitted from one generation to the next and
how inequality in one generation impacts inequality in the next generation. We find that material
wealth is by far the most important, unequally distributed, and highly transmitted form of wealth
in these societies, while embodied and relational forms of wealth show much weaker importance
and transmission. We conclude that the unique characteristics of material wealth, and especially
wealth in land, are key to the high and persistent levels of inequality seen in societies practicing
intensive agriculture. We explore the implications of our findings for the evolution of inequality in
the course of human history and suggest that it is the intensification of agriculture and the accom-
panying transformation of land into a form of heritable wealth that may allow for the social complexity
long associated with agricultural societies.

Mary K. Shenk is Assistant Professor in the Department of An-
thropology of the University of Missouri (107 Swallow Hall, Co-
lumbia, Missouri 65211-1440, U.S.A. [shenkm@missouri.edu]).
Monique Borgerhoff Mulder is Professor in the Department of
Anthropology and the Graduate Group in Ecology at the University
of California, Davis (Davis, California 95616-8522, U.S.A.). Jan
Beise is Associate Statistician in the Statistics Division of the De-
partment of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations (New
York, New York 10017, U.S.A.). Gregory Clark is Professor in the
Department of Economics at the University of California, Davis
(Davis, California 95616, U.S.A.). William Irons is Professor in the
Department of Anthropology of Northwestern University (1810 Hin-
man Avenue, Room A54B, Evanston, Illinois 60208, U.S.A.). Donna
Leonetti is Professor in the Department of Anthropology of the
University of Washington (Seattle, Washington 98195, U.S.A.).
Bobbi S. Low is Professor in the School of Natural Resources and
Environment at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, Michigan
48109, U.S.A.). Samuel Bowles is Research Professor and Director
of the Behavioral Sciences Program at the Santa Fe Institute (1399
Hyde Park Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501, U.S.A.) and Pro-
fessor of Economics at the University of Siena. Tom Hertz is Vis-
iting Professor of Economics at the International University College
of Turin (Piazza Carlo Felice 18, 10121, Torino, Italy). Adrian Bell
is a doctoral student in the Graduate Group in Ecology at the Uni-
versity of California, Davis (Davis, California 95616, U.S.A.). Pa-
trizio Piraino is Research Economist at Statistics Canada (RHC-24,
Tunney’s Pasture, Ottawa, Ontario K1A0T6, Canada). This paper
was submitted 1 V 09 and accepted 21 VII 09.
1. The views and opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors
and do not necessarily represent those of the United Nations.

䉷 2010 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2010/5101-0007$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/648658
 66
Intergenerational Wealth Transmission
among Agriculturalists
This article uses data from several past and present popula-
tions from Africa, Asia, and Europe to explore wealth trans-
mission in societies practicing intensive agriculture. We begin
by defining the production system of intensive agriculture,
the forms of wealth most important in such societies, and
the important components of agricultural societies as they
relate to social inequality and the transmission of wealth be-
tween generations. We follow with a discussion of the eth-
nographic background of the eight societies in our sample
and the different types of wealth analyzed for each. After
presenting quantitative results on the extent and form of in-
tergenerational transmission for each society and type of
wealth, we conclude with a summary of our results and dis-
cussion of their importance for understanding key themes of
social structure and inheritance in agricultural societies.
Agricultural Production Systems
We classify agricultural production systems as those that cul-
tivate crops using technologies such as plows and traction
animals and that are characterized by land-limited cultivation
systems, and in some cases by markets for land and agricul-
tural labor. Intensive agriculture is characterized by the cul-
tivation of plants using technologies that supplement human
labor; these technologies allow for more yield per acre as well
as larger fields of crops (e.g., Boserup 1965; Scarborough 2003;
Wittfogel 1957). In the literature on Eurasia, the most well-
known and widely discussed technologies include various
forms of irrigation and the use of plows pulled by large do-
mesticated animals (Barker 2006; Scarborough 2003; Witt-
fogel 1957). However, many other forms of intensive agri-
culture have been in widespread use including raised fields,
terracing, reservoirs, chinampas (stationary floating islands of
arable land constructed on shallow lake beds), and various
types of organic fertilizers including manure, charcoal, bone,
and shell (e.g., Erickson 2008; Rostain 2008; Scarborough
2003; Wenke 1984).
Although the domestication of crops began around 12,000
years ago, the first farmers used only human labor and hand
tools in a subsistence pattern that many anthropologists refer
to as horticulture (Barker 2006; Bellwood 2005; see Gurven
et al. 2010, in this issue). It would take thousands more years
before there was evidence for the practice of intensive agri-
culture in highly populated river valleys in Mesopotamia
(4100 BCE), Egypt (4000 BCE), China (2400 BCE), and South
Asia (2400 BCE), contemporaneous with the rise of early
complex societies in those regions (Barker 2006; Bellwood
2005; Feinman and Price 2001; Scarborough 2003). Intensive
agriculture also developed independently in Mesoamerica be-
ginning around 2000 BCE and in Andean South America
around 1300 BCE (Billman 2002; Denevan 2001; Moseley
2001; Scarborough 2003).
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
The initial development of agriculture gave rise to farming
societies characterized by sedentary people, villages with per-
manent structures, and food storage (e.g., Barker 2006; Bell-
wood 2005; Wenke 1984). Despite higher rates of commu-
nicable diseases, agricultural populations typically had higher
fertility and faster population growth rates, a trend some-
times referred to as the Neolithic demographic transition (e.g.,
Bocquet-Appel and Bar-Yosef 2008; Caldwell et al. 2006;
McKeown 1988; McMichael 2001). The very early farming
societies are often thought to have been relatively egalitarian
or to have only limited hierarchies and primarily local forms
of political integration; evidence for this has come primarily
from the archaeological literature (e.g., Barker 2006; Hayden
2001) or has emphasized ethnographic data from traditional
societies (e.g., Johnson and Earle 2000; Service 1962).
The development of intensive agriculture is historically as-
sociated with the rise of complex societies, including complex
chiefdoms and states (Boserup 1965; Fried 1967; Hayden
2001; Johnson and Earle 2000; Service 1975; Stein 2001;
Wenke 1984). Complex societies are characterized by social
stratification (economic and social differentiation among peo-
ple) as well as political integration of communities resulting
in multiple levels of sociopolitical hierarchy (Johnson and
Earle 2000). They are also characterized by complex divisions
of labor, including a rise in full-time occupational speciali-
zations such as artisans, merchants, religious specialists, bu-
reaucrats, tax collectors, and soldiers, often concentrated in
urban areas (e.g., Fried 1967; Johnson and Earle 2000; Service
1975; Stein 2001) and with greater concentrations of people,
including the formation of the first towns and cities (Boserup
1965; Carneiro 1970; Johnson and Earle 2000; Stein 2001;
Wenke 1984). Despite these developments, however, the ma-
jority of people in such cultures may continue to live in rural
areas and/or work in agriculture (Boserup 1965; Johnson and
Earle 2000; Scarborough 2003; Wolf 1966). All populations
studied in this paper are a part of modern or historical state
societies, though some exist on the rural margins of the state
while others exist closer to urban centers.
Wealth and Inequality in Agricultural Societies
Material, embodied, and relational wealth. As discussed in the
introductory paper in this special section, in order to capture
important aspects of wealth in very different types of societies
our project defines wealth in a very general sense as any
attribute of individuals that contributes to their long-term
well-being. We distinguish three categories of wealth. Material
wealth refers to animals, objects, or spaces in the physical
world over which individuals have ownership or use rights.
Embodied wealth refers to attributes contained in the bodies
of individuals, including somatic attributes such as strength
and immune function as well as mental attributes such as
knowledge and skills (see Kaplan 1996 for a more general
treatment of the concept of “embodied capital”). Relational
wealth resides in the social connections and relationships be-
Shenk et al. Foundations of Agrarian Inequality
tween individuals through which they are able to gain access
to information or flows of resources.
In most traditional agricultural societies, land is a—if not
the—primary form of material wealth. Agricultural societies
usually recognize property rights in land held by a kin group
or an individual (Boserup 1965; Goody 1976; Harrell 1997).
Land has two peculiar characteristics that influence its im-
portance: arable land is finite, and if divided into small enough
parcels it may no longer be enough to support a family. In
contrast to horticulturalists, agricultural societies are char-
acterized as being land limited rather than labor limited (e.g.,
Goody 1976; Harrell 1997; Johnson and Earle 2000). Popu-
lation growth can result in all of the arable land in an area
being owned and under cultivation (Beise and Voland 2008;
Boserup 1965; Johnson and Earle 2000; Low 1990; Voland
and Dunbar 1995). Truly land-unlimited agricultural popu-
lations may occur only during the expansion of agriculturalists
into a frontier area (e.g., American pioneers) and are thus
temporary situations. Intensive agriculturalists also possess
other important material wealth currencies. Farmers may have
significant wealth in livestock, a more movable form of sub-
sistence-related wealth than land that is often subject to less
complex inheritance dynamics (Goody 1976; Goody, Thirsk,
and Thompson 1976). Stored grain can serve both as a sub-
sistence staple and as a form of currency for paying rent on
land or other kinds of debts (Feinman and Price 2001). Du-
rable goods such as plows, carts, tools, furniture, cooking
vessels, jewelry, and clothing can be important forms of wealth
that often can be divided among multiple heirs (Goody 1976).
Finally, it is in intensive agricultural societies that money first
becomes a common form of wealth, often associated with
commerce in urban areas but also penetrating into rural areas
where trade may sometimes take place in cash rather than in
kind (Boserup 1965; Johnson and Earle 2000; Wolf 1966).
As in other types of societies, kin ties remain an important
source of social support and relational wealth (Harrell 1997;
Johnson and Earle 2000). Preindustrial agricultural societies
are overwhelmingly patrilineal (see table 1), though relatives
through the female line are usually acknowledged and may
be important sources of political alliances and marriage part-
ners (Ember and Ember 1983; Goody and Tambiah 1973;
Harrell 1997). Bilateral societies are not uncommon, but true
matrilineality is rare in agricultural societies, and the examples
that do exist are mostly small in scale (Ember and Ember
1983; Harrell 1997).
In preindustrial agricultural societies, embodied wealth in
health, longevity, and knowledge usually covary with, and may
often be the result of, class structure and differences in ma-
terial wealth (e.g., Caldwell et al. 2006; Clark and Hamilton
2006; Lee 1973; Milanovic, Lindert, and Williamson 2007;
Scott and Duncan 2002). The same is also true for the number
and survival of children, the form of embodied wealth that
has received the most attention in the literature. For agri-
cultural laborers, peasants, and other types of workers—usu-
ally comprising the largest portion of the population—a large
67
number of children is often considered ideal as it increases
the labor pool available to a family, provides insurance to
parents in old age and siblings in case of disability, and ac-
counts for the likely loss of children due to high rates of
mortality (Caldwell et al. 2006; Harrell 1997; Wolf 1966).
While child mortality is often lower among wealthier people
(Clark and Hamilton 2006; Milanovic, Lindert, and William-
son 2007; Scott and Duncan 2002), for propertied classes in
agricultural societies, a large number of heirs is not always
welcome as they may necessitate the division of the property
and thus a dilution of social status (e.g., Baker and Miceli
2005; Goody 1990; Goody, Thirsk, and Thompson 1976; Har-
rell 1997; Saller 1994). While this problem is most commonly
dealt with using preferential inheritance rules (see below),
sometimes it may result in the limitation of family size
through infanticide or other methods (e.g., Caldwell and
Caldwell 2005; Dickemann 1984).
Intergenerational transmission. Agricultural societies com-
monly have highly codified rules regarding inheritance, es-
pecially inheritance of land. While the equal division of land
between all children does occur, some type of exclusion is
more common (see table 1; Baker and Miceli 2005; Harrell
1997). Such practices range from primogeniture in favor of
the oldest son to ultimogeniture in favor of the youngest son
(or occasionally daughter) to the exclusion of one sex or the
other altogether from the inheritance of land—most com-
monly, the division of the father’s property among sons only
(Baker and Miceli 2005; Goody 1976; Harrell 1997). In con-
trast, the inheritance of cash, animals, and household goods
may be somewhat more equal, and it is common for daughters
excluded from inheriting land to inherit these items (Goody
1976, 1990; Goody and Tambiah 1973; Harrell 1997).
Given the importance of material wealth in agricultural
societies, arranged marriage is common with a key consid-
eration being the wealth or social status of the partner’s family.
While bride-price is the prevailing custom in small-scale ag-
ricultural societies or among people of low or moderate status,
dowry marriage—a custom unique to intensive agricultur-
alists—characterizes high-status groups in several of the larg-
est complex societies of Eurasia (Boserup 1970; Fortunato,
Holden, and Mace 2006; Goody 1976; Goody and Tambiah
1973; Pagel and Meade 2005; table 1). The most detailed
treatment is that of Goody and Tambiah (1973), who maintain
that dowry is a means of passing inheritance through both
sons and daughters, as opposed to bridewealth systems in
which little to no wealth may be inherited through daughters.
While both polygyny and monogamy are common among
small-scale agriculturalists (table 1), monogamy is the dom-
inant form of marriage in many large-scale complex state
societies (Betzig 1986; Ember and Ember 1983; Goody 1990).
Goody (1976) argues that farmers are more likely to be po-
lygynous in Africa because land is not limited, while many
Eurasian farmers are monogamous because of land shortages
and a motivation to limit heirs. While elite men in monog-
amous societies may still have sexual access to other women,
Table 1. Characteristics of 61 societies practicing intensive agriculture as defined by
codes 5 (intensive agriculture using fertilization, crop rotation, or other techniques
to shorten or eliminate fallow period) and 6 (intensive irrigated agriculture) on var-
iable 232 “Intensity of Cultivation” in the 186 societies comprising the Standard
Cross-Cultural Sample (Murdock 1967; Murdock and White 1969)

Parameter % of n societies (n)

Region (v200):
Africa 13.1 (61)
Circum-Mediterranean 37.7 (61)
East Eurasia 26.2 (61)
Insular Pacific 8.2 (61)
North America 8.2 (61)
South America 6.6 (61)
Domestic organization (v210):
Independent nuclear family—monogamy 13.3 (60)
Independent nuclear family—occasional polygyny 18.3 (60)
Polygyny 11.7 (60)
Minimal (stem) extended families 8.3 (60)
Small extended families 31.7 (60)
Large extended families 16.7 (60)
Degree of polygamy (v861):
Polyandry 0 (57)
Monogamy prescribed 24.6 (57)
Monogamy preferred 14.0 (57)
Limited polygyny 31.6 (57)
Full polygyny 29.8 (57)
Descent (v247):
Patrilineal 47.5 (61)
Duolateral/ bilineal 3.3 (61)
Matrilineal 9.8 (61)
Quasi-lineages 1.6 (61)
Ambilineal 3.3 (61)
Bilateral 26.2 (61)
Descent (v70):
Patrilineal 59 (61)
Matrilineal 8.2 (61)
Ambilineal 3.3 (61)
Bilateral 29.5 (61)
Mean size of local communities (v235):
50–99 11.5 (52)
100–199 11.5 (52)
200–399 13.5 (52)
400–1,000 3.8 (52)
1000–5,000 5.8 (52)
5,000–50,000 15.4 (52)
50,000⫹ 38.5 (52)
Mode of marriage (v208):
Bride-price 45.9 (61)
Bride-service 1.6 (61)
Token bride-price 16.4 (61)
Gift exchange 6.6 (61)
Sister or female relative exchanged 3.3 (61)
Absence of consideration 14.8 (61)
Dowry 11.5 (61)
Shenk et al. Foundations of Agrarian Inequality 69

Table 1. (Continued)
Parameter % of n societies (n)
Inheritance of property:
Real property (v278):
Absence of property rights or inheritance rules 3.6 (56)
Matrilineal (sister’s sons) 1.8 (56)
Other matrilineal heirs (e.g., younger brother) 3.6 (56)
Children—with daughters receiving less 14.3 (56)
Children—equally for both sexes 12.5 (56)
Other patrilineal heirs (e.g., younger brothers) 5.4 (56)
Patrilineal (sons) 58.9 (56)
Movable property (v279):
Absence of property rights or inheritance rules 5.5 (55)
Other matrilineal heirs (e.g., younger brother) 1.8 (55)
Children—with daughters receiving less 20.0 (55)
Children—equally for both sexes 16.4 (55)
Other patrilineal heirs (e.g., younger brothers) 5.5 (55)
Patrilineal (sons) 50.9 (55)
Distribution of property among individuals of same category:
Real property (v280):
Equal or relatively equal 52.5 (53)
Exclusively or predominantly to the one adjudged best qualified 9.8 (53)
Ultimogeniture (to the junior individual) 3.3 (53)
Primogeniture (to the senior individual) 21.3 (53)
No rules (or insufficient information) 13.1 (53)
Movable property (v281):
Equal or relatively equal 52.5 (51)
Exclusively or predominantly to the one adjudged best qualified 8.2 (51)
Ultimogeniture (to the junior individual) 3.3 (51)
Primogeniture (to the senior individual) 19.7 (51)
No rules (or insufficient information) 16.4 (51)
Class stratification—prevailing type (v270):
Absence among freemen 19.7 (61)
Wealth distinctions 21.3 (61)
Elite 1.6 (61)
Dual (hereditary aristocracy) 19.7 (61)
Complex (social classes) 37.7 (61)

Note. The Standard Cross-Cultural Sample is a group of ethnographically well-known societies from
around the world chosen to facilitate cross-cultural research while attempting to avoid the problem
of cultural similarity arising from historical relationships or cross-cultural contact.

monogamy limits the number of legal heirs to a man’s prop-
erty, thus helping to maintain the integrity of an estate in
land and concentrate wealth in order to compete for social
status (Gaulin and Boster 1990). In general, bridewealth per-
sists in polygynous cultures, whereas monogamous groups
may practice either bridewealth or dowry (Gaulin and Boster
1990; Goody and Tambiah 1973; Harrell 1997).
While many agriculturalists reside in nuclear families, at
least for part of the domestic cycle, the usual family structure
in such societies is some form of extended family (table 1).
These range in size and makeup from smaller extended fam-
ilies including parents, their heir, and the heir’s family, to
larger extended families including parents, their adult children
of the same gender (usually sons), and those children’s fam-
ilies (e.g., Ember and Ember 1983; Harrell 1997). Inheritance
typically takes place at the dissolution or formation of house-
holds (Goody 1976, 1990; Harrell 1997), through marriage,
fissioning, or the death of an elder member.
Status and inequality. Inequality is a fundamental charac-
teristic of societies practicing intensive agriculture (Fried
1967; Johnson and Earle 2000; Service 1962, 1975). This in-
equality may be between individuals or groups within the
society and may have many dimensions, including different
types of wealth, occupation, and gender.
Most notably, social differentiation is often organized
around how much land individuals own or have access to the
income of and under what kind of land tenure system (Bos-
erup 1965; Goody 1976; Johnson and Earle 2000). Differences
in land tenure run the gamut from small holdings allocated
by kin groups to small holdings directly held by parents and
passed to children, to larger holdings owned or legally held
by landlords who either rent the land to tenants in exchange
for part of the crop or hire agricultural laborers to work for
them directly, and to state societies that “farm taxes” from
the citizenry by means of tax collectors (Boserup 1965; John-
son and Earle 2000; Netting 1993; Richards 1993a; Wolf 1966).
 70
Relatively egalitarian smallholding systems were common
throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa, but large, premodern
state societies in Europe and Asia often had systems of land
tenure in which large amounts of land were held by small
numbers of elites (e.g., Caldwell and Caldwell 2005; Johnson
and Earle 2000; Goody 1976; Maddison 1971; Netting 1993;
Richards 1993a; Wolf 1966). Even in this regard there was
variation, though, from states in which land was considered
the direct property of the head of state (e.g., India under the
Mughals), and people were temporarily awarded the right to
collect rent from it, to states in which landlords owned land
directly and had the power to farm it, rent it, or sell it (e.g.,
premodern England; Boserup 1965; Maddison 1971; Richards
1993a).
While the most basic form of social inequality in agricul-
tural societies lies in ownership of and relationship to land
(landowner, landlord, tax farmer, smallholder, tenant, serf,
slave), inequality may also be related to other kinds of oc-
cupational or craft specializations, commonly including ar-
tisans, soldiers, priests, and bureaucrats (Johnson and Earle
2000; Service 1975). Occupational specialization may be re-
lated to formal types of social differentiation including hi-
erarchical systems of castes (hierarchical systems based on
heredity that define and limit members’ occupations or social
opportunities) and social classes (hierarchical systems based
on occupation, wealth, or social position; e.g., Dumont 1970).
Alternately, status differences may be based on differences in
monetary wealth generated by control of land or through
participation in trading or commercial ventures (Goody 1976;
Johnson and Earle 2000).
Gender inequality can be pronounced in agricultural so-
cieties, especially in cultures where men perform most of the
agricultural labor (Boserup 1970; Sanday 1981). In such cases,
women may be subject to a variety of constraints including
claustration (e.g., purdah), body modification (e.g., foot bind-
ing), enforcement of modest behavior, and a strong emphasis
on virginity at marriage and chastity thereafter (Harrell 1997;
Low 2000). Such practices are usually more common among
people of higher social status (Dickemann 1979; Low 2000).
Perhaps the most pervasive form of gender inequality in ag-
ricultural societies can be found in their customs of inheri-
tance, which are overwhelmingly patrilineal and which in
more exaggerated cases involve the exclusion of women from
ownership of land or other types of property altogether
(Goody 1976; Low 2000). Even in cases where women may
be given substantial dowries, their control of this wealth may
be limited (Goody and Tambiah 1973; Sharma 1993).
The preferential marriage of people of similar social stand-
ing (also called isogamy) is quite common in agricultural
societies (Dumont 2006; Harrell 1997). This may include rules
or practices of endogamy by caste, social class, occupation,
or wealth. The marriage of daughters up the social hierarchy
(hypergyny) may also be practiced, particularly in dowry-
giving cultures (e.g., Dickemann 1979), while celibacy (non-
marriage) is not infrequently practiced when resources are
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
scarce or would become diluted by large numbers of heirs
(e.g., Betzig 1986). Overall, an important effect of preferential
marriage in agricultural societies is the continued concentra-
tion of wealth within families and the consequent perpetu-
ation of inequality across generations (Harrell 1997).
Sample and Methods
In this paper we use 12 measures (five material, five embodied,
and two relational) from eight populations to explore patterns
of intergenerational wealth transmission in agricultural so-
cieties. Here we give critical ethnographic background, intro-
duce our wealth variables, and discuss how they are measured.
Overview of Sample Populations
This paper presents data on intergenerational wealth trans-
mission from eight agricultural populations. Our small sample
cannot be statistically representative of all intensive agricul-
turalists, but it covers much of the range of geographic and
social characteristics discussed above. While many of our pop-
ulations had several estimates of wealth available, those an-
alyzed here are limited by considerations of data quality or
relevance to our focus on inequality in preindustrial societies.
Each of the contemporary populations are experiencing vary-
ing degrees of economic development, thus measures of ed-
ucation and income were excluded as having unclear meaning
in a preindustrial context. While it is clear that both existed
in large premodern agricultural societies such as those of
historical Europe and historical South Asia (e.g., Clark 2007;
Richards 1993b), the forms of education and monetary in-
come exhibited in recent societies have often been influenced
by their incorporation in modernizing states and thus may
not have the same form as in the past. Measures of repro-
ductive success were excluded if there was evidence of a de-
mographic transition because it was unclear whether more
children would represent greater wealth under such
conditions.
East Anglians
Ethnographic background. This is a historical sample com-
posed of men’s wills from preindustrial England during the
years 1540–1790. The wills used are mainly from testators in
East Anglia, Essex, and Suffolk and are part of a collection
of more than 8,000 wills from these counties that have been
transcribed. England at this time was an agricultural society
with a strong mercantile component. Rural areas were oc-
cupied by landowning members of the gentry and smaller-
scale farmers, while towns were centers of local commerce
where there were concentrations of people working outside
of agriculture including traders, craftsmen, and professionals.
Further details of the society can be found in Clark (2007).
The sample consists of wills of fathers and sons, including
114 father-son pairs. The relationship of testators was estab-
Shenk et al. Foundations of Agrarian Inequality
lished through the details contained in the wills and some-
times in additional material from church registers of baptisms,
burials, and marriages. There is some uncertainty in these
matches: for a match to be declared, someone of the son’s
name had to appear in the will of the father, and if the son’s
first and last names were common, then some other details
in the son’s will would have to match with the father’s. Wills
as a source of data are described in detail in Clark and Ham-
ilton (2006).
Wealth measures. Wills contained a variety of information,
of which two variables will be used in these analyses: estate
value and reproductive success (RS). Estimates of estate value
were constructed from the information in wills by adding
together the cash payments directed by the testator with the
estimated value of houses, land, animals, and grain be-
queathed by the testator in the will. As land is often the most
valuable asset left in the will, this measure can also be seen
as a proxy for wealth in land. The RS in this sample is the
number of surviving children at the time the will was written,
which was typically within a year of the testator’s death. Estate
value is an excellent measure of material wealth in this society,
since it includes most of the large types of material wealth
that were socially important in the period. The RS is also a
good a good measure of embodied wealth in preindustrial
England since wealthier people tended to have more surviving
offspring (Clark and Hamilton 2006).
Because this data set is based on recorded wills there are
special problems of bias that need to be addressed. Not all
men made wills, and the frequency of will making was cor-
related with wealth. Occupations of men in the sample are
biased toward the gentry, professionals, and yeoman farmers
but also include traders, craftsmen, shepherds, and laborers
in smaller numbers. For a given set of fathers making wills,
richer sons were more likely to also make wills and so to enter
the data set. This will bias downward the estimation of the
coefficient measuring the link between the wealth of gener-
ations. Another problem is that wealth is measured with sub-
stantial error, again biasing coefficient estimates downward.
A third bias is that for a father-son pair of will makers to be
identified, the father had to have a son who survived to age
16 or more. Since England in these years was a Malthusian
preindustrial society with slow population growth, the average
man had only slightly more than one son surviving at time
of death (Clark and Hamilton 2006). However, the number
of surviving children was higher for wealthier individuals who
were more likely to leave wills. The poorest testators left one
son on average, the richest two sons. Given that wealth cor-
relates across generations, this again increases the likelihood
of wealthier father-son pairs. However, this bias will not affect
the estimates of the intergenerational linkage.
Skellefteå
Ethnographic background. The Skellefteå region is a cluster of
five contiguous parishes in northern Sweden. During the
71
nineteenth century, farming was the major occupation and
there were low levels of market penetration. Land was the
most important resource and had strong effects on repro-
duction and other variables (see Low 1990 for details). In-
heritance laws mandated that only men owned land, though
widows could hold the land in trust for their children. During
the study period, new land came into cultivation and the
number of landowners increased. In the 63 villages for which
tax records were read, the landowners of record increased
steadily from 283 in 1830 to 511 in 1890; the average amount
of land held declined from 183.46 to 106.34 hundredths of a
mantal. While most of the population was engaged in agri-
culture, there were social class differences related to occu-
pation and landownership. These categories include upper
middle class (business owners with many servants), lower
middle class (small businessmen, artisans, soldiers), farmers
who owned land (Bönder), tenant farmers (torpare), crofters
(smaller land renters), agricultural workers, and paupers. For
further details, see Low and Clarke (1990) and Low, Clarke,
and Lockridge (1991).
Wealth measures. We consider the embodied wealth mea-
sure RS, measured here as number of children born. The
sample includes men born between 1800 and 1845 who re-
mained alive until adulthood (18) and their kin in any of 63
villages along the Skellefteå River in Norbotten County in
northern Sweden. The years of the data are 1800–1888, and
the total number of pairs in the sample is 2,515. Data come
from the mantalslängder (land tax records) for the years 1830,
1840, 1850, 1860, 1870, 1879 (records were missing for 1880),
and 1890. The records link men to fathers, spouses, and chil-
dren. We restricted the sample to all men age 18 and up for
whom we have complete records of their reproductive lives
(i.e., they died in record or were alive and age 45 or older at
the end of the sample; outmigrants aged !45 were excluded).
Reproductive success is an appropriate measure in this society
since it is a predemographic transition society with relatively
high fertility (Low 1990); there is also a relationship between
material wealth (primarily in land) and RS.
Krummhörn
Ethnographic background. This is a historic population from
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the Krummhörn
region in Ostfriesland (northwest Germany). The data derive
from a reconstruction study based on church registers com-
plemented with information from tax rolls and other sources,
and the sample consists of data from 19 of the 32 parishes
that existed in the Krummhörn. The Krummhörn was an
ecologically and culturally separate region within Ostfriesland,
bounded by the North Sea on three sides and by a relatively
infertile heath in the east. It has an area of about 150 km2
and consists mainly of very fertile marsh soil. This fertile soil
was responsible for the great wealth that farmers were able
to achieve as of the end of the Middle Ages. A capital- and
market-oriented agriculture developed and replaced a pure
 72
subsistence economy earlier here than elsewhere in Germany,
and large-sized businesses dominated the farming economy.
By the end of the nineteenth century, the marshlands covered
only about 7% of the province of Hannover but produced
over 22% of the agricultural profit (Meitzen 1894).
The population was characterized by a very low growth
rate and a nearly stable cross-sectional size of approximately
14,000 individuals during the period under study. In an eco-
logical context, it is possible to describe the Krummhörn as
a saturated habitat consisting of only a limited number of
available breeding places. The social organization was struc-
tured almost exclusively by the possession of land. The
amount of land owned or under lease was decisive for the
rights to vote and to stand for election in the spheres of both
politics and the church. The accumulation of returns led to
remarkable wealth concentration in some lineages. Conse-
quently, a “two-class society” developed, with big farmers who
owned both the land and the capital on the one hand and a
large mass of landless workers on the other. In most villages,
a middle class was almost completely missing.
Traditionally, the youngest son inherited the landed prop-
erty (ultimogeniture), although this habit became more flex-
ible in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Noninheriting
siblings had to receive financial compensation from the heir,
and as a rule, brothers received twice the amount that their
sisters did. This inheritance pattern put a large economic
pressure on the main heir to compensate his siblings—either
by selling land or realizing other forms of capital. The social
group of “full” farmers was well aware of these risks, and they
manipulated both their reproductive behavior and dispersal
patterns so as to minimize competition between siblings (Be-
ise and Voland 2008; Voland and Dunbar 1995).
Wealth measures. In this paper we compare landownership
between fathers and children, using the husband’s land as the
land estimate for daughters who did not own land in their
own right. Both sexes are included since in the Krummhörn
both sexes inherited wealth (although not equally and not
necessarily of the same kind). Tax rolls give the amount of
land owned or leased for individual persons. In this context
socioeconomic status was linked to the amount of possessed
land, and it was of no importance whether the land was owned
or rented. Due to the social structure of the Krummhörn, the
sample consists of many landless workers with zero values for
land wealth. A size of 75 grasen was historically regarded as
the lower limit for a “full” and self-sustainable farm and
defines the group of “full farmers.”
Kipsigis
Ethnographic background. Kipsigis are agropastoralists who
have lived in southwestern Kenya (now Rift Valley Province)
for the last 500–600 years on the lower hills of the White
Highlands. Although this part of Kenya developed econom-
ically very fast both during the midcolonial and early inde-
pendence periods, lifestyles remain largely traditional, reflect-
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
ing both Kenyan commitment to ethnic identity and an
unusual and persistent tendency among Kipsigis to remain
in their home area. Since the 1930s, land has been the primary
source of wealth, critical for both subsistence and market
production. Livestock wealth is of both economic and cultural
significance; cattle and goats are used in marriage payments
and for exchange networks, domestic dairy produce, and
commercial sale.
Land and livestock are generally highly correlated and are
important determinants of health, wealth, and fitness for both
men and women (Borgerhoff Mulder 1987a, 1987b). Land
and livestock are inherited by sons following a rule of equal
division; daughters disperse at marriage with no property.
Inheritance is a fluid process: young men in their late teens
start cultivating a small patch of land on their father’s plot
and gain use rights to certain livestock. On their marriage,
an allocation of livestock and of farming/grazing land is made;
these capital assets are seen as still “owned” by the father but
effectively used by the son. In making these allocations, fathers
anticipate claims from sons who are still young (and even
unborn).
Livestock are also the basis of important social network
capital embodied in the traditional (and now disappearing)
institution of kimanangan wherein men allocate some of their
cattle to livestock-loaning partners in a system designed to
reduce spatially the risks associated with herding, such as
unpredictable rainfall, raiding, and disease (Peristiany 1939);
generally only the households richer in livestock have ki-
manangan partners.
Wealth measures. Land (in acres) and livestock (counts) are
determined either by the Kenya Government Land Office or
by field interviews. Reliability of acreage reports were very
high as measured across two different surveys (r p 0.93). Cat-
tle numbers, the principle source of livestock wealth, were
recorded for all men in the sample in 1982–1983 and in 1991
(1991 data are used here). Reliability is estimated from the
correlation between years (1983 and 1991) of r p 0.75 (taken
from a larger sample), undoubtedly reflecting temporal
changes in livestock holdings. For women, land and livestock
measures are the allocations made to them by their husbands.
For some families data were available on the number of
kimanangan (cattle-loaning) partners of fathers and sons,
taken from interviews and informal conversations conducted
at various times during this study; daughters do not have
kimanangan partners—their measure is based on their hus-
band’s number of partners. These data were not systematically
collected and did not exist for all male residents, but the
information is not private and all cross-reports were consis-
tent; therefore, data quality is thought to be relatively good.
Reproductive success is likely to be a good measure of
embodied wealth given this high-fertility society with a mod-
erate rate of infant mortality, and it is measured as number
of children surviving 5 years. It is very high for some men
due to polygyny. Due to the demographic focus of the original
study (and great familiarity with the subjects due to a yearlong
Shenk et al. Foundations of Agrarian Inequality
time-allocation study), measures are likely to be highly reli-
able. For the younger generation, children under 5 years of
age are common but are devalued by the probability of sur-
viving to age 5 (.84 in the broader population; Borgerhoff
Mulder 1998).
The sample includes all houses in three neighborhoods
settled by Kipsigis in the first half of the twentieth century
(Borgerhoff Mulder 1990). All households were visited and
all reproductive-aged individuals were interviewed, either in
1983 or in both 1983 and 1991. For this study records are
retained only for those who have reached 30 years of age, so
as to focus on men and women who were well advanced in
their reproductive and economic careers; some of the F1 in-
dividuals were recently deceased, but their household wealth
could be reconstructed.
Yomut
Ethnographic background. The Yomut are one of several large
Turkmen descent groups that occupy a contiguous area in
what is now the Islamic Republic of Turkmenistan (the former
Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic) and adjacent areas of Iran
and Afghanistan. The Yomut of the Gorgan Plain in northern
Iran divide themselves into two groups: the agriculturalist
Chomur and the pastoralist Charwa, though this is a difference
in emphasis and both groups practice agriculture and pas-
toralism. We discuss data from the agricultural Chomur here;
data from the pastoral Charwa are discussed by Borgerhoff
Mulder et al. (2010, in this issue). The Chomur practice a
combination of subsistence production (primarily rainfall cul-
tivation of wheat and barley) and production for market ex-
change (e.g., cotton). Most agricultural work is done by men;
thus, households with large male labor pools are better able
to enhance their wealth over time (Irons 1975), and invest-
ment is biased toward sons (Irons 2000). At the time of field
research (1965–1974), the Yomut were a prosperous group
by Iranian standards, and there was almost no migration out
of the Gorgan Plain.
The Yomut are patrilineal as well as patrilocal and live in
joint families consisting of parents, unmarried children, and
married adult sons. Both land and livestock pass from father
to son at the time of household division, which takes place
either at the death of the father or when a son decides to
leave the joint family because his own children are nearing
the time of marriage. Most fathers try to give equal patri-
monies to each son, but as conditions change this is not always
possible. A son’s patrimony is usually a subject of discussion
among a father and all his sons for a period of time before
the actual separation and granting of a patrimony occurs.
After a son has received a patrimony, he does not inherit
anything more at his father’s death.
Wealth measures. The wealth measure used here is Yomut
patrimony in land, probably the most important measure of
material wealth in this society. Data comes from a 1973–1974
survey of 566 households in a random stratified sample of
73
21 communities including both Chomur and Charwa. The
survey gathered data on household histories, wealth, and de-
mographic history. Each household head was asked what he
had received in land as a patrimony when he became inde-
pendent and also what amount of land he had given as a
patrimony to any of his sons who had separated from his
household. The amount of land was converted into Iranian
Tomans, which at the time were valued at 7 Tomans to $1.
Bengali
Ethnographic background. The Bengali ethnic group is located
in northeast India (where most are Hindu) and Bangladesh
(where most are Muslim); the study population is a Hindu
group from the southern part of the Indian state of Assam.
Bengalis are culturally and linguistically related to the dom-
inant Hindu cultures of South Asia and follow the regional
practices of patriliny, patrilocality, and the joint family. Mar-
riages are arranged, and the woman joins her husband’s
household to be supervised by her mother-in-law. Dowries
and bride-price rarely figure in these arranged marriages since
the group is so poor. Most of the Bengalis in this sample are
members of Scheduled Castes, low-status groups formerly
called “untouchables.”
Bengalis grow primarily rice in paddies that are plowed by
hand. Men do most of the agricultural labor, control all prop-
erty, and dominate selling and buying in the markets. Women
do not go to the market nor work in the fields but apply
themselves to tasks such as winnowing and kitchen gardening
in addition to household work. Resources available to both
groups are generally very low. Mean income from all sources
for Bengali households in our study sample is $979 Ⳳ
$1,071 per year, while median income is $556. Labor migra-
tion does occur in this population but is much more common
among sons than daughters. Women, however, do sometimes
migrate out of the region through marriage.
Wealth measures. The Bengali data on reproductive success
compare the fertility of mothers to the fertility of their sons
(or in reality, son’s wives, as men are monogamous and rarely
marry more than once). The sample included all married
reproductive-age women in the study villages; the age range
was 16 to 50. Only members of scheduled castes were in-
cluded, as members of higher castes may have begun to un-
dergo a demographic transition. Current contraceptive use is
only recorded for about 14% of women and shows no effect
on fertility until age 40 and above, and a high fertility of 6.2
TFR (total fertility rate) is found for women in the sample
(Leonetti, Nath, and Hemam 2007a). Data are also missing
on a number of sons, many of whom have probably migrated,
which may have a limited effect on the sample. Thus, the
sample used is 382 of a total sample of 612. For RS we use
children alive at age 5 years and those alive under age 5 years
devalued by .95 (representing the risk of mortality during
those ages). Measurement error is likely to be quite low as
any child who survived to age 5 among the mother’s offspring
 74
or any currently living child among the son’s offspring would
have been reported. Given that the Bengali are a high-fertility
population with a moderate rate of child mortality, RS is likely
to be a good measure of embodied wealth in this society.
Khasi
Ethnographic background. The Khasi are a tribal people located
in northeast India and Bangladesh; the study population
comes from the eastern part of the state of Meghalaya in
India. They are culturally and linguistically related to other
Austro-Asiatic tribal groups from Southeast Asia, and follow
the regional pattern of matriliny and matrilocality. Marriages
are based on love attachments, and when a woman marries,
her husband usually (but not always) joins her household.
The couple often continues to reside with her mother until
one or two children are born, and then they are expected to
move into her own household in the same village, often in
close proximity. The youngest daughter is expected to stay
with her mother and inherit the house and spiritual headship
of the lineage.
In the system of Khasi matriliny studied here, women have
control of and direct access to resources. Khasi women own
property and run the markets. They also work the fields, run
businesses and work for wages, although many are house-
wives. Men usually provide agricultural labor and income,
first to their mother’s household and then to their wife’s
household. Khasi grow rice paddy in plowed fields but also
cultivate vegetable gardens on the hillsides using hoes. Both
genders share in field labor, with women dominating hill-
side gardening. While Khasi live on the fringe of India’s fast-
developing economy, wealth and market integration in this
population are both low. Mean income from all sources in
our study sample is $726 Ⳳ $495 per year while the median
income is $622 per year for Khasi households. Migration is
not common among the Khasi as their tribal status makes it
difficult for all but urban members to be comfortable in the
larger Indian society. Women from villages also would find
it more difficult than men to migrate.
Wealth measures. The Khasi data on reproductive success
compare the fertility of mothers with the fertility of their
daughters, who may have borne children by more than one
husband (Leonetti et al. 2004). Daughter’s ages range from
17 to 70 years. For RS, we count children alive at age 5 years
and those alive under age 5 years devalued by .97 (representing
the risk of mortality during those ages). Measurement error
is thought to be quite low as any child who survived to age
5 among the mother’s offspring or any currently living child
among the daughter’s offspring would most likely have been
reported. Given that the Khasi are a high-fertility population
with a moderate rate of child mortality, RS is likely to be a
good measure of embodied wealth in this society.
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
Bengaluru
Ethnographic background. Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore) is
a city of 5 million people and capital of the state of Karnataka
in south central India. Ethnically, the people in the study
sample are mostly Kannadigas but some are also Tamils or
Telugus who have lived in the area for many generations. The
people of this region share dominant social characteristics
with other South Asians, most notably a patrilineal kinship
system, the joint family, and arranged marriage with patrilocal
residence. However, South Indians are less extremely patri-
lineal and patriarchal than are North Indians (e.g., Bengalis)
and women often have more social and economic freedom.
Among Hindu Indians, wealth is traditionally divided equally
among sons at the death of the father, while daughters take
their share of their parents’ wealth via dowry at marriage.
In traditional South India, most people had hereditary oc-
cupations determined by caste and family membership, pri-
marily including priests, merchants, farmers, artisans, and
agricultural laborers. However, this system has been slowly
breaking down for more than a century, and in modern urban
India perhaps only one-quarter of people still follow hered-
itary occupations, while others have adopted skill-based wage-
labor occupations. Traditional gender roles dictate that men
do most of the market labor while women do most of the
domestic labor. In modern India, men are still expected to
have primary economic responsibility for their families.
Though it is becoming more acceptable for women to work
outside the home, the prevalence of working women varies
a great deal by caste, social class, and the occupation of other
household members (Shenk 2004).
The data presented here were gathered in 2001–2002 as
part of a survey of 400 adults aged 45–70 that collected de-
tailed retrospective data on three generations of the respon-
dents’ families. The older generation in the sample includes
the people surveyed, born from the early twentieth century
through the 1940s. The younger generation in the sample
contains their children, born from the 1930s through 1970;
the sample was restricted to those born before 1973 to avoid
the effects of rapid economic growth that began with Indian
market liberalization in the 1990s. These data capture a period
in which South India’s economy was slowly moving from a
subsistence agricultural base with a limited cash economy in
the early twentieth century to an agricultural and commercial
economy with increasing emphasis on wage labor in the
mid–late twentieth century. Much of the earlier generation
comes from rural areas while the more recent generation is
split between urban and rural areas.
Wealth measures. Both traditional and modern Indians
place heavy reliance on family relationships as a means of
maintaining social and economic stability and achieving
status. A key way in which families bolster their positions is
to arrange marriages with families having desirable charac-
teristics. When arranging marriages, not just the character-
istics of the spouse but the number and characteristics of his
Shenk et al. Foundations of Agrarian Inequality 75

or her close relations and occasionally even more distant rel- Table 2. Judgments of a (wealth importance) exponents for
atives are likely to be considered (Shenk 2005). The wealth eight agricultural societies in the project sample (see text
variable used in this article, in-law networks, reflects the num- for further explanation)
ber of a spouse’s close relatives including parents, siblings,
and siblings’ spouses (the data are retrospective, so all are Type of wealth
adults) weighted by their wealth compared to that of the focal
Population Embodied Relational Material
parent or child. The analysis compares the degree of similarity
between the number of people in the in-law networks of a Bengali .30 .20 .50
parent and those of his/her child. Although such in-law net- Bengaluru .30 .30 .40
works are of course not directly heritable, they are heavily East Anglians .50 .00 .50
Khasi .40 .25 .35
influenced by characteristics of both the family and individual.
Kipsigis .20 .10 .70
Though Bengaluru is undergoing economic development, so- Krummhörn .15 .10 .75
cial networks created through marriage are very important Skellefteå .10 .10 .80
socially, and the ethnographic evidence suggests that they were Yomut (Chomur) .20 .10 .70
even more significant in the past. For these reasons, in-law Mean (SD) .27 (.134) .14 (.098) .59 (.171)
networks are likely to be a reasonably representative example
of relational wealth in intensive agriculturalist societies. classes of wealth (material, relational, and embodied). Our
results give evidence of high levels of intergenerational trans-
Results and Population-Specific mission for material wealth, and variable (low to moderate)
levels of transmission for embodied wealth and relational
Discussion wealth.
Analytical Measures In order to discuss whether the transmission of wealth is
related to inequality, we have also estimated a Gini coefficient
Each researcher who contributed data to this project was asked for each wealth type and calculated an average Gini coefficient
to give his or her judgment for the variable a for their pop- for each wealth class (see table 3). The Gini coefficient is a
ulation. Alpha (a) denotes the relative importance of em- measure of inequality ranging from 0 (equal wealth) to ap-
bodied, material, or relational wealth and is defined as the proximately 1 (all wealth held by a single household) and is
percentage change in a family’s well-being associated with a commonly used to compare levels of inequality across soci-
percentage change in a particular wealth category, holding eties (e.g., Milanovic, Lindert, and Williamson 2007).
other wealth categories constant (see the introduction to this
special section [Bowles, Smith, and Borgerhoff Mulder 2010]).
Material Wealth
The a estimates for the eight agricultural populations dis-
cussed above can be found in table 2. Researchers nearly We have five measures of material wealth in our sample: three
universally rated material wealth as the most important wealth of land, one of cattle, and one of estate value. The b’s for
class in agricultural societies, with some estimates of a reach- these variables are quite high, ranging from 0.36 to 0.64, as
ing very high levels (e.g., 0.7 or 0.8 out of 1) and the average well as highly significant, indicating a high degree and con-
a being 0.59. Estimates of the relative importance of em- sistency of transmission of material wealth between genera-
bodied wealth were more moderate, with the average a being tions. High transmission of wealth is associated with and has
0.27. Finally, the estimated a for relational wealth was on the potential to generate high levels of inequality, as indicated
average just 0.14. The a judgments given by researchers are by Gini coefficients ranging from 0.45 to 0.71. High b’s also
very close to several independent estimates of a for agricul- have the potential to perpetuate inequality over time; our
tural societies including the agropastoralist Nyaturu of Tan- estimates imply that a child born into the top material wealth
zania and eight grain- and four rice-producing areas in India. decile in an agricultural society is much more likely to end
These estimates and methods of estimation are discussed in up in the top decile as an adult than is a child born into the
the concluding essay in this special section (Smith et al. 2010, bottom decile (see further discussion below). These patterns
in this issue; see also CA⫹ online supplement “Estimating are likely to lead to the persistence of wealth within families
the Inheritance of Wealth in Premodern Societies” in the on- and the perpetuation of a hierarchical social structure over
line edition of Current Anthropology; Borgerhoff Mulder et time. Figure 1 gives a graphical comparison of the material
al. 2009). wealth data for four societies in our sample.
The primary quantitative measure discussed in this paper Estate value among East Anglians. The b for estate value
is b, the estimated percent difference in child’s wealth asso- among East Anglians, 0.642, is quite high and statistically
ciated with a 1% difference in parent’s wealth. The b value significant. The Gini coefficient is 0.608. This is despite the
is unit free, allowing us to compare across numerous types fact that the estate-value data are likely to be biased downward
of wealth from different social settings. In table 3 we present due to (a) the greater likelihood of wealthy individuals en-
b coefficients for 12 wealth types divided between the three tering the sample (reducing variance in the sample as com-
 76 Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010

Table 3. Transmission coefficients (b) for different wealth types in eight agricultural
societies

Wealth class, population, wealth type (N pairs) b (SE) P valuea Gini (SE)

Material wealth:
East Anglians:
Estate value (land; 210) .642 (.073) .000 .608 (.022)
Kipsigis:
Land (270) .357 (.041) .000 .482 (.036)
Livestock (270) .635 (.098) .000 .450 (.019)
Krummhörn:
Land (1,602) .610 (.043) .000 .708 (.008)
Yomut (Chomur):
Patrimony (land; 58) .528 (.147) .000 .615 (.028)
Material wealth averages .55 (.07) .00 .57 (.05)
Embodied wealth:
Bengali:
Reproductive success (382) ⫺.074 (.057) .191 .228 (.006)
East Anglians:
Reproductive success (200) .171 (.150) .255 .415 (.016)
Khasi:
Reproductive success (650) .165 (.045) .000 .198 (.004)
Kipsigis:
Reproductive success (270) .213 (.106) .044 .301 (.015)
Skellefteå:
Reproductive success (2,515) .010 (.028) .714 .251 (.002)
Embodied wealth averages .10 (.07) .16 .28 (.05)
Relational wealth:
Bengaluru:
In-law networks (249) .114 (.073) .117 .468 (.189)
Kipsigis:
Cattle partners (102) .041 (.139) .767 .446 (.021)
Relational wealth averages .08 (.11) .47 .46 (.08)
Overall averages (all wealth)b .36 (.05) .00 .48 (.04)
a
P values are calculated from two-tailed tests of the hypothesis that true b for a given row equals 0.
b
Overall average weights the wealth class averages by the mean values of a from table 2.

pared to the real population) and (b) errors in measuring
wealth expected when deriving data from the texts of wills.
Nonetheless, these results are in keeping with expectations
for the heritability of wealth in a large, complex state society
with large wealth differentials and several distinct social clas-
ses, especially as estate value estimates include the key variable
of land (usually the most valuable item in a will and the most
significant correlate of wealth). Please see figure 1A for a
graphical comparison of parent-offspring estate value among
East Anglians.
Land in the Krummhörn. The estimated heritability of land
in the Krummhörn area of Germany is 0.610 and the Gini is
0.708, estimates well in keeping with other figures for heritable
wealth in complex agricultural societies and with the very
stable socioecological and demographic situation that ob-
tained in the Krummhörn during the study period. Land was
the single most important source of wealth, and there was
low social mobility, even lower for men than for women.
While there was a certain downward mobility (due to over-
reproduction of the wealthy group of farmers), there was
hardly any upward mobility. For instance, the correlation be-
tween a father’s wealth and a child’s wealth is slightly higher
for sons than daughters since some daughters might marry
down, while sons did not marry without sufficient wealth.
See figure 1B for a comparison of parent-offspring landown-
ership in the Krummhörn.
Yomut patrimony in land. The b coefficient for patrimony
in land is 0.528 (Gini p 0.615), a high and statistically sig-
nificant value that is consistent with other estimates for the
transmission of material wealth among agriculturalists. How-
ever, the value is a bit lower than that for East Anglians and
the Krummhörn, perhaps because Yomut families are larger
and land is inherited relatively equally by all sons rather than
through a preference for primogeniture. See figure 1C for a
comparison of father and son land value among the Yomut.
Kipsigis land and livestock. The b coefficients for father-
offspring pairings, both for land (0.357, Gini p 0.482) and
for livestock (0.635, Gini p 0.450), are high, reflecting the
fact that Kipsigis who settled in Abosi faced a largely unsat-
urated habitat and settled very large initial plots (Borgerhoff
Mulder 1990). Men with many wives, or with the livestock
to acquire many wives, tended to claim and protect large plots,
and these were inherited by their sons. Since there can be an
economy of scale to both the herding and the protection of
Shenk et al. Foundations of Agrarian Inequality 77

Figure 1. Comparison of parent-offspring material wealth in four soci-

eties: A, estate value among East Anglians, b p 0.642; B, parent-offspring
landownership among Kipsigis, b p 0.357; C, parent-offspring land-
ownership in the Krummhörn, b p 0.610; and D, father-son patrimony
in land among the Yomut, b p 0.528. (The line through the points in
each panel depicts the underlying linear regression on which the b es-
timates are based.)

livestock (see Borgerhoff Mulder et al. 2010), those with ini-
tially larger herds will be favored, generating high b’s in un-
saturated habitats. The high b’s also reflect the great economic
expansion in the mid-to-late colonial and early independence
periods, with some Kipsigis working on adjacent European
farms and investing their wages in livestock. Polygyny appears
not to have diluted the parent offspring correlations. Even
though wealthy men attract more wives than poorer men,
women’s marriages did not entirely follow an ideal free dis-
tribution (Borgerhoff Mulder 1990); in other words, wealthy
men in this sample still tended to have sons who were wealthy,
despite their polygyny (see Borgerhoff Mulder et al. 2010).
 78
See figure 1D for a comparison of parent-offspring landown-
ership among the Kipsigis.
Embodied Wealth
Our five measures of embodied wealth are all estimates for
reproductive success, the number of surviving children left
by the parent(s) as compared to the child. Two of our mea-
sures of b are close to 0, while the other three show a moderate
degree of heritability (0.165–0.213), two of which are statis-
tically significant. These findings suggest that (a) there can
be a moderate degree of transmission with regard to RS in
agricultural societies but also that (b) there is likely to be
variability among agricultural societies on this measure. The
Gini coefficients range from 0.20 to 0.42, indicating mod-
erately high levels of inequality with regard to RS in the so-
cieties being studied.
Reproductive success among East Anglians. The estimated
heritability of reproductive success among historical East An-
glians is 0.171, though it is not significantly different from 0.
Mortality patterns in sixteenth- to eighteenth-century En-
gland varied consistently by social class, which is likely to be
a primary factor in producing the observed positive associ-
ation. Error introduced by obtaining data on RS from wills
and because people with more children are more likely to
enter the sample is likely to bias the estimate downward,
suggesting that it is possible that the actual value is higher or
is significant. The Gini coefficient of 0.38, however, suggests
that there is considerable variability in the existing sample.
Skellefteå reproductive success. The estimated b for repro-
ductive success among nineteenth-century Swedish agricul-
turalists is 0.010, a very low figure signifying essentially no
inheritance of this trait, though the Gini of 0.251 shows con-
siderable inequality in RS in the population. Sample size can-
not account for the low b since N p 2,515, a very high num-
ber for this study. This was in a period, however, when only
half of all Swedes, like other northern Europeans, married
overall (Low, Clarke, and Lockridge 1991). Since arable land
was saturated, many people did not have the means of ob-
taining or supporting a spouse. Unmarried siblings might
migrate or stay in their natal households and help their mar-
ried sibling(s) with production and reproduction. The older
generation in the sample is all fathers (who by definition
married and had children), while all of their children, many
of whom did not marry and thus had no recorded offspring,
remain in the sample. Furthermore, while there is evidence
that landholders have marginally more children and that sons
of landholders are more likely to be landholders themselves,
as well as more likely to marry, these associations fail to pro-
duce a consistent reproductive advantage to the offspring of
parents with high RS (Low 1991; Low and Clarke 1990). This
may in part reflect the movement away from agriculture dur-
ing this period—entrepreneurial men who obtained land
through routes other than inheritance had more children than
the sons of landowners who inherited land.
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
Kipsigis reproductive success. At 0.213, the b coefficient for
reproductive success is moderate and in keeping with the
results from some other agricultural societies. The Gini co-
efficient of 0.301 also reflects a moderate amount of inequality
in RS. Given polygyny as well as the high intergenerational
correlations for land and stock between fathers and sons, this
lower value is somewhat surprising and may in part reflect
sample bias—specifically, the relatively young age of the chil-
dren in this sample, insofar as wealth in this population pri-
marily affects RS through polygyny and length of reproductive
life span (Borgerhoff Mulder 1988). The b for RS, however,
is significant only for sons and not for daughters, suggesting
(again) that the intergenerational correlation of RS is driven
largely by wealth and polygyny.
Bengali reproductive success. The b coefficient, ⫺0.088, is
low and not significantly different from 0. The Gini coefficient
shows a moderate level of inequality in RS at 0.228. The
Bengali sample is all from the scheduled castes (former un-
touchables) who are not only very poor but whose lives are
circumscribed by social restrictions on access to economic
opportunities and social resources. They are often malnour-
ished (Leonetti et al. 2005), and their reproductive health is
also poor. The low b may indicate that the data reflect de-
mographic transition even though family planning use is very
limited. It may also be due to delays in marriages in the past
quarter-century as socioeconomic conditions in India have
altered people’s lives with costs they did not formerly face,
such as longer times in school for their children. Such con-
straints are especially high for people with high RS since they
must face the costs of marrying and educating more children
(Leonetti and Nath 2009).
Khasi reproductive success. The b coefficient is 0.165
(P p .000), indicating moderate transmission of fertility levels
between mothers and daughters among the Khasi. The Gini
coefficient of 0.198 shows moderate inequality. The Khasi are
a high-fertility matrilineal population (TFR of 6.7 children
for women in the sample) where help from the mother’s kin
supports reproduction. On the other hand, because women
usually have several sisters (over half have three or more),
more variance in reproductive success may occur due to com-
petition among daughters for mother’s resources or help with
children (Leonetti, Nath, and Hemam 2007b) resulting in an
uneven distribution of fertility among sisters. Also, divorce
rates are high (24% of women in the sample have been di-
vorced), which may produce differences in resources and help
from husbands leading to differences in RS (Leonetti et al.
2004; Leonetti, Nath, and Hemam 2007b). In other words,
strong upward pressure from cooperation among matrilineal
kin (such that big kindreds produce big kindreds in the next
generation) is countered by downward pressure resulting from
variance among kin and from competition over resources
among kin resulting in a moderate value.
Shenk et al. Foundations of Agrarian Inequality
Relational Wealth
Finally, we have two measures of relational wealth, one of
which (cattle partners) shows little heritability while the other
(size of in-law network) shows a modest degree of transmis-
sion between parents and children. Since in-laws cannot be
added or shed at will, while cattle partnerships are mutually
voluntary, this difference is consistent with structural differ-
ences in the types of networks analyzed. Both measures of
relational wealth show similarly high levels of inequality, how-
ever, suggesting that the difference is in the transmission pro-
cesses rather than in the form of relational wealth.
Kipsigis cattle partners. The b coefficient for cattle-loaning
partners is effectively 0, while the Gini coefficient 0.446 shows
moderately high levels of inequality. Among Kipsigis there is
no direct transmission of cattle-loaning partners—they tend
to be selected from among age mates. Wealthier cattle owners
tend to have more partners than owners of few cattle (r p
0.55, n p 156, P ! .001), and therefore, to the extent that sons
of wealthy fathers are wealthy themselves (see above), we
would expect men with large networks to have children who
have large networks. The fact that this is not the case suggests
that personal factors other than wealth play an important part
in obtaining partners (particularly among sons where the cor-
relation between wealth and number of partners is lower
[r p 0.32, n p 102, P ! .001] than it is among the fathers).
Bengaluru in-law networks. A Gini coefficient of 0.468
shows a relatively high degree of inequality for in-law net-
works in twentieth-century Bengaluru, while a b coefficient
of 0.114 (P p .117) suggests that network size is only modestly
transmitted. These results suggest that those with larger,
wealthier social networks are somewhat more effective at
achieving large and wealthy social networks for their children
but that there are probably other variables at play that limit
the importance of this effect. For instance, family and network
characteristics may be only one feature of interest in a po-
tential spouse since much emphasis is also placed on indi-
vidual characteristics (e.g., Shenk 2004, 2005).
General Discussion and Conclusions
The high transmission coefficients of material wealth (mean
b p 0.55, highly significant; shown in table 3) stand in sharp
contrast to the much lower coefficients of embodied wealth
(mean b p 0.10, not significant) and relational wealth (mean
b p 0.08, not significant). These estimates indicate that a
person born into the top decile with regard to material wealth
is more than 80 times more likely to end up in the top decile
than is someone born in the bottom decile; the corresponding
numbers for embodied wealth and relational wealth are only
about 1.9 and 1.7 times more likely, respectively (see Bowles,
Smith, and Borgerhoff Mulder 2010; CA⫹ online supple-
ment). The average Gini coefficient for material wealth shows
high levels of inequality (0.57), embodied wealth shows mod-
erate levels of inequality (0.28), and relational wealth shows
79
an intermediate level of inequality 0.46). These patterns sug-
gest that in agricultural societies, highly transmitted forms of
wealth may also be more unequally distributed, as is the case
for material wealth, but also that relatively high levels of in-
equality may exist in the absence of high levels of transmis-
sion, as appears to be the case for relational wealth.
Strong transmission of material wealth is consistent across
the agricultural societies in our sample, even though they are
quite distinct in terms of their regions, sizes, and social traits.
In fact, most of our agricultural sample excludes urban pop-
ulations in large state societies that are likely to show the
highest levels of inequality, and thus, our analyses may con-
sequently underestimate the degrees of both inequality and
transmission of inequality in preindustrial societies. Our find-
ings suggest that an emphasis on heritable forms of material
wealth is highly characteristic of agricultural societies and may
be an essential part of and motivation for the social features
common to intensive agricultural societies (as discussed in
the introduction to this paper). The results for embodied
capital and relational wealth, on the other hand, are much
lower and more inconsistent, suggesting that while they may
be moderately important in some cultures they are not as
necessary a part of the social complex associated with inten-
sive agriculture.
Why, given what we know about agricultural populations
as reviewed above, should material wealth show such a dis-
tinctive pattern? We suggest that material wealth is inherently
easier to transmit between generations, more subject to cus-
tomary and legal control of transmission, and, especially in
the case of land, central to both the subsistence needs and
levels of inequality of the cultures under study. Our data
suggest that heritable wealth, and especially wealth in land,
may be the key factor in the high and persistent levels of
inequality seen in societies practicing intensive agriculture.
It is sometimes argued that intensive agriculture enables
social complexity by creating food surpluses that allow for
greater concentration of population as well as the freeing of
people from subsistence work to pursue other tasks. These
changes are thought to both allow for and necessitate an
increase in political complexity and hierarchy (e.g., Carneiro
1970, Johnson and Earle 2000; Service 1975); however, the
direction of causation is the subject of much debate (Pearson
1957). For example, Boserup (1965) argues that the amount
of work involved in intensive agriculture would not be un-
dertaken if it were not made necessary by a large population,
while others have argued that geographical circumscription
(Carneiro 1970) and/or social inequality (Price 1995; Wolf
1966) are probably necessary to motivate people to do the
additional work required.
As discussed above, land limitation is a key feature of in-
tensive agricultural societies. In fact, the rise of intensive ag-
riculture implies a shift from labor limitation (meaning that
not all arable land is in use) among horticulturalists to land
limitation (implying that all or most arable land is in use)
among intensive agriculturalists (e.g., Goody 1976; Harrell
 80
1997; Johnson and Earle 2000). Regardless of the mechanism
of causation, when population densities increase to the point
where most easily cultivable land is in use, intensive methods
of agriculture become both necessary and cost effective (Bos-
erup 1965; Johnson and Earle 2000). When most or all cul-
tivable land is occupied, use rights are likely to be codified
through land tenure systems including either direct owner-
ship, or various forms of landlordship with rights to collect
rents, either of which can be amenable to rules of inheritance
favoring kin (Boserup 1965). Once use rights or ownership
of land is codified, land itself becomes a form of heritable
wealth, creating the potential for the levels of persistent in-
equality shown in this paper.
Milanovic, Lindert, and Williamson (2007) examine levels
of income inequality in ancient societies based on data gleaned
from tax censes, dwelling rents, and other fiscal documents.
The authors combine data on 14 ancient and preindustrial
state societies, 12 from Eurasia and two Spanish colonies in
the Americas, all of which would be classified as intensive
agriculturalists under our criteria. The authors report Gini
indices on a scale of 0 to 100 (instead of 0 to 1 but interpreted
in the same way) ranging from 23.9 for China in 1880 to 63.5
for Nueva España (Spain’s colony in Mexico and the sur-
rounding area) in 1790, with the average being 44.1. The levels
of inequality reported are very similar to those found in our
analyses for material wealth, and in fact the authors show
that the inequality patterns seen in their historical samples
are quite similar to patterns in modern preindustrial nations
from which most of our nonhistorical data sets come.
As discussed above, agricultural populations also show a
significant elaboration of rules of inheritance, legitimacy,
property transfer, and succession to office, which have been
discussed by many authors (e.g., Baker and Miceli 2005; Bos-
erup 1965, 1970; Engels 1942 [1884]; Gaulin and Boster 1990;
Goody 1976, 1990; Harrell 1997; Pagel and Meade 2005).
Most notably, these include rules that limit inheritance to
only one or a category of heirs as well as rules establishing
legitimacy of heirship, an important mechanism to reduce
the number of heirs likely to inherit. In fact, research on large
premodern state societies such as ancient Rome, Soong China,
and Tokugawa Japan suggests that early demographic tran-
sitions may have been effected by infanticide and the aban-
donment of children (e.g., Caldwell and Caldwell 2005; Saller
1994). Such practices are thought to have been more frequent
among the aristocracy and landed gentry whose power was
partly based on wealth, very often wealth in land, and who
were therefore motivated to restrict the number of their heirs.
Perhaps perversely, the strong emphasis on material wealth
in agricultural societies can also produce a greater disasso-
ciation between the RS of parents and children, especially if
inheritance rules related to material wealth have strong effects
on which children marry and at what ages. For example, many
parts of northern and western Europe have had low marriage
rates in the last several centuries (Caldwell et al. 2006; Dixon
1978; Guinnane 1997). This phenomenon is usually inter-
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
preted as a result of land saturation and restrictive inheritance
rules, especially the preferential inheritance of land by oldest
sons and the preferential transfer of dowries to oldest daugh-
ters (e.g., Boone 1986; Goody 1976).
These considerations may be important in explaining why
our b estimates for RS are moderately low and why some of
them show no relationship at all. Our higher estimates
(0.165–0.213) are consistent with data showing correlations
in effective family size of 0.29 between parents and sons and
0.18 between parents and daughters among Hutterites (Pluzh-
nikov et al. 2007) when social constraints are limited, while
our very low estimates appear to be related to high levels of
social constraints (such as high rates of nonmarriage) that are
likely to have affected some agricultural societies in the pre-
industrial past. However, it has also been found that RS is
more highly heritable after the demographic transition than
before it (Bittles, Murphy, and Reher 2008; Reher, Ortega,
and Sanz-Gimeno 2008), so by excluding data on RS from
societies showing evidence of a demographic transition, we
may have limited our sample to societies with lower trans-
mission of RS, thus biasing our averages downward.
Our research has two final implications. First, anthropol-
ogists have long used Service’s (1962) categorization of so-
cieties into bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states as a practical
way of discussing cultural differences in hierarchy and in-
equality. The empirical basis for these categories, however,
was limited to detailed ethnographic observation and involved
only limited quantitative evidence (see Johnson and Earle
2000 for a recent and more ethnographically detailed treat-
ment). Our study tests some of Service’s key assertions using
detailed quantitative data, and our results support some of
his generalizations. Most importantly, we find very clear evi-
dence that societies practicing intensive agriculture have high
levels of inequality based primarily on forms of material
wealth that are easily transmitted between generations and
that present a clear basis for the formation and perpetuation
of high degrees of social stratification.
Our findings further imply that heritable wealth—and es-
pecially wealth in land—may be a more fundamental indicator
of social inequality in preindustrial societies than the rise of
cities or the formation of early states. Indeed, it may be that
the combination of intensive agricultural technologies with
heritable wealth is a precondition that allows the elaboration
of characteristics such as social complexity, monumental ar-
chitecture, and urbanization that defines ancient and modern
state societies. While high population densities and circum-
scription certainly can be associated with the rise of inequality,
it may be their relationship to land limitation that is key to
the high and persistent levels of inequality in material wealth
that we see in agricultural societies in both the past and the
present.
There are clearly limitations in what can be inferred about
the past, and especially the ancient past, from this type of
data. We cannot reconstruct the process of change, nor can
we be certain how representative the data we use may be of
Shenk et al. Foundations of Agrarian Inequality
other agrarian societies. We hope, however, that by including
multiple measures from a broad range of historical as well as
modern populations, we have been able to obtain reasonable
estimates of the transmission of different forms of wealth
among intensive agriculturalists. The consistency of our re-
sults between societies in our sample, as well as with estimates
of a, b, and Gini coefficients from other agrarian societies
from different places and time periods, suggests that our find-
ings may very well reflect important patterns in agrarian so-
cieties in both the present and the past.
Acknowledgments
M. K. Shenk would like to thank the National Science Foun-
dation for funding data collection, the National Institute of
Child Health and Human Development for postdoctoral sup-
port, and the Institute for Social and Economic Change, Ban-
galore, for field support. D. Leonetti thanks the Indo-U.S.
Programme on Contraceptive and Reproductive Health Re-
search and the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecol-
ogy, University of Washington, for support of fieldwork. M.
Borgerhoff Mulder would like to thank the National Geo-
graphic Society and the University of California, Davis, for
support of fieldwork. All authors would like to thank the
Behavioral Sciences Program of the Santa Fe Institute for
hosting two workshops on the Inheritance of Inequality in
Premodern Societies.
References Cited
Baker, M., and T. Miceli. 2005. Land inheritance rules: theory
and cross-cultural analysis. Journal of Economic Behavior
and Organization 56:77–102.
Barker, G. 2006. The agricultural revolution in prehistory: why
did foragers become farmers? New York: Oxford University
Press.
Beise, J., and E. Voland. 2008. Intrafamilial resource com-
petition and mate competition shaped social-group-specific
natal dispersal in the 18th and 19th century Krummhörn
population. American Journal of Human Biology 20:
325–336.
Bellwood, P. 2005. First farmers: the origins of agricultural
societies. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Betzig, L. 1986. Despotism and differential reproduction. New
York: Aldine.
Billman, B. 2002. Irrigation and the origins of the southern
Moche state on the north coast of Peru. Latin American
Antiquity 13:371–400.
Bittles, A., M. Murphy, and D. Reher. 2008. Inherited di-
mensions of human populations in the past. Human Nature
19:1–6.
Bocquet-Appel, J., and O. Bar-Yosef, eds. 2008. The Neolithic
demographic transition and its consequences. New York:
Springer.
Boone, J. 1986. Parental investment and elite family structure
81
in preindustrial states: a case study of late medieval-early
modern Portuguese genealogies. American Anthropologist
88:859–878.
Borgerhoff Mulder, Monique. 1987a. On cultural and repro-
ductive success: Kipsigis evidence. American Anthropologist
89:617–634.
———. 1987b. Resources and reproductive success in
women, with an example from the Kipsigis. Journal of Zo-
ology 213:489–505.
———. 1988. Reproductive success in three Kipsigis cohorts.
In Reproductive success. T. H. Clutton-Brock, ed. Pp.
419–435. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
———. 1990. Kipsigis women’s preferences for wealthy men:
evidence for female choice in mammals. Behavioural Ecol-
ogy and Sociobiology 27:255–264.
———. 1998. Brothers and sisters: how sibling interactions
affect optimal parental allocations. Human Nature 9(2):
119–162.
Borgerhoff Mulder, Monique, Samuel Bowles, Tom Hertz,
Adrian Bell, Jan Beise, Gregory Clark, Ila Fazzio, et al. 2009.
Intergenerational transmission of wealth and dynamics of
inequality in pre-modern societies. Science 326:682–688.
Borgerhoff Mulder, Monique, Ila Fazzio, William Irons, Rich-
ard L. McElreath, Samuel Bowles, Adrian Bell, Tom Hertz,
and Leela Hazzah. 2010. Pastoralism and wealth inequality:
revisiting an old question. Current Anthropology 51(1):
35–48.
Boserup, E. 1965. The conditions of agricultural growth: the
economics of agrarian change under population pressure. New
York: Aldine.
———. 1970. Women’s role in economic development. New
York: St. Martin’s.
Bowles, Samuel, Eric Alden Smith, and Monique Borgerhoff
Mulder. 2010. The emergence and persistence of inequality
in premodern societies: introduction to the special section.
Current Anthropology 51(1):7–17.
Caldwell, J., and B. Caldwell. 2005. Family size control by
infanticide in the great agrarian societies of Asia. Journal
of Comparative Family Studies 36(2):205–226.
Caldwell, J., B. Caldwell, P. Caldwell, P. McDonald, and T.
Schindlmayr. 2006. Demographic transition theory. Dor-
drecht: Springer.
Carneiro, R. 1970. A theory of the origin of the state. Menlo
Park, CA: Institute for Humane Studies.
Clark, G. 2007. A farewell to alms: a brief economic history of
the world. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Clark, G., and G. Hamilton. 2006. Survival of the richest: the
Malthusian method in England, 1585–1638. Journal of Eco-
nomic History 66:707–736.
Denevan, W. 2001. Cultivated landscapes of native Amazonia
and the Andes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dickemann, M. 1979. The ecology of mating systems in hy-
pergynous dowry societies. Social Science Information 18:
163–196.
———. 1984. Concepts and classification in the study of
 82
human infanticide: sectional introduction and some cau-
tionary notes. In Infanticide: comparative and evolutionary
perspectives. G. Hausfater and S. B. Hrdy, eds. Pp. 427–438.
New York: Aldine.
Dixon, R. 1978. Late marriage and non-marriage as demo-
graphic responses: are they similar? Population Studies 32:
449–466.
Dumont, L. 1970. Homo hierarchicus: an essay on the caste
system. M. Sainsbury, trans. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
———. 2006. An introduction to two theories of social an-
thropology: descent groups and marriage alliance. R. Parkin,
ed. and trans. New York: Berghahn.
Ember, M., and C. Ember. 1983. Marriage, family, and kinship:
comparative studies of social organization. New Haven, CT:
HRAF.
Engels, F. 1942 (1884). The origin of the family, private property,
and the state. New York: International.
Erickson, C. 2008. Amazonia: the historical ecology of a do-
mesticated landscape. In Handbook of South American ar-
chaeology. H. Silverman and W. Isbell, eds. Pp. 157–184.
New York: Springer.
Feinman, G., and T. Price. 2001. Archaeology at the millen-
nium: a sourcebook. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.
Fortunato, L., C. Holden, and R. Mace. 2006. From bride-
wealth to dowry? a Bayesian estimation of ancestral states
of marriage transfers in Indo-European groups. Human
Nature 17:355–376.
Fried, M. 1967. The evolution of political society: an essay in
political anthropology. New York: Random House.
Gaulin, S., and J. Boster. 1990. Dowry as female competition.
American Anthropologist 92:994–1005.
Goody, J. 1976. Production and reproduction: a comparative
study of the domestic domain. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press.
———. 1990. The Oriental, the ancient and the primitive:
systems of marriage and the family in the pre-industrial so-
cieties of Eurasia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Goody, J., and S. Tambiah. 1973. Bridewealth and dowry. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Goody, J., J. Thirsk, and E. Thompson. 1976. Family and
inheritance: rural society in Western Europe, 1200–1800.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Guinnane, T. 1997. The vanishing Irish: households, migration,
and the rural economy of Ireland, 1850–1914. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Gurven, Michael, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Paul L.
Hooper, Hillard Kaplan, Robert Quinlan, Rebecca Sear, Eric
Schniter, et al. 2010. Domestication alone does not lead to
inequality: intergenerational wealth transmission among
horticulturalists. Current Anthropology 51(1):49–64.
Harrell, S. 1997. Human families. Boulder, CO: Westview.
Hayden, B. 2001. Rich man, poor man, beggar man, chief:
the dynamics of social inequality. In Archaeology at the
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
millennium: a sourcebook. G. Feinman and T. Price, eds.
Pp. 231–272. New York: Springer.
Irons, W. 1975. The Yomut Turkmen: a study of social organ-
ization among a central Asian Turkic-speaking population.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Museum of
Anthropology.
———. 2000. Why do the Yomut raise more sons than daugh-
ters? In Adaptation and human behavior. L. Cronk, N.
Chagnon, and W. Irons, eds. Pp. 223–236. Hawthorn, NY:
Aldine De Gruyter.
Johnson, A., and T. Earle. 2000. The evolution of human so-
cieties: from foraging group to agrarian state. 2nd edition.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Kaplan, H. 1996. A theory of fertility and parental investment
in traditional and modern human societies. Yearbook of
Physical Anthropology 39:91–135.
Lee, R. 1973. Population in preindustrial England: an econ-
ometric analysis. Quarterly Journal of Economics 87:
581–607.
Leonetti, D., and D. Nath. 2009. Age of first reproduction
and economic change in the context of differing kinship
ecologies. American Journal of Human Biology 21:428–437.
Leonetti, D., D. Nath, and N. Hemam. 2007a. The behavioral
ecology of family planning in two ethnic groups in N.E.
India. Human Nature 18:225–241.
———. 2007b. “In-law conflict”: women’s reproductive lives
and the roles of their mothers and husbands among the
matrilineal Khasi. Current Anthropology 48:861–890.
Leonetti, D., D. Nath, N. Hemam, and D. Neill. 2004. Do
women really need marital partners for support of their
reproductive success? the case of the matrilineal Khasi of
N.E. India. In Socioeconomic aspects of human behavioral
ecology. Michael Alvard, ed. Special issue, Research in Eco-
nomic Anthropology 23:151–174.
———. 2005. Kinship organization and grandmother’s im-
pact on reproductive success among the matrilineal Khasi
and patrilineal Bengali of N.E. India. In Grandmotherhood:
the evolutionary significance of the second half of female life.
E. Voland, A. Chasiotis, and W. Schiefenhoevel, eds. Pp.
194–214. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Low, B. 1990. Occupational status, land ownership, and re-
productive behavior in 19th-century Sweden: Tuna parish.
American Anthropologist 92(2):457–468.
———. 1991. Reproductive life in 19th-century Sweden: an
evolutionary perspective on demographic phenomena.
Ethology and Sociobiology 12:411–468.
———. 2000. Why sex matters: a Darwinian look at human
behavior. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Low, B., and A. Clarke. 1990. Family patterns in nineteenth-
century Sweden: impact of occupational status and land-
ownership. Journal of Family History 16(2):117–138.
Low, B., A. Clarke, and K. Lockridge. 1991. Family patterns
in nineteenth-century Sweden: variation in time and space.
Swedish Demographic Database Monograph 6:1–157.
Shenk et al. Foundations of Agrarian Inequality
Maddison, A. 1971. Class structure and economic growth: India
and Pakistan since the Moghuls. New York: Norton.
McKeown, T. 1988. The origins of human disease. Oxford:
Blackwell.
McMichael, A. 2001. Human frontiers, environments, and dis-
ease: past patterns, uncertain futures. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Meitzen, A. 1894. Der Boden und die landwirtschaftlichen Ver-
hältnisse des Preußischen Staates. Berlin: Parey.
Milanovic, B., P. Lindert, and J. Williamson. 2007. Measuring
ancient inequality. World Bank Policy Research Working
Paper 4412. http://ssrn.com/abstractp1033224.
Moseley, M. 2001. The Incas and their ancestors: the archae-
ology of Peru. London: Thames & Hudson.
Murdock, G. 1967. Ethnographic atlas: a summary. Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh Press.
Murdock, G., and D. White. 1969. Standard Cross-Cultural
Sample. Ethnology 9:329–369.
Netting, R. 1993. Smallholders, householders: farm families and
the ecology of intensive, sustainable agriculture. Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press.
Pagel, M., and A. Meade. 2005. Bayesian estimation of cor-
related evolution across cultures: a case study of marriage
systems and wealth transfer at marriage. In The evolution
of cultural diversity: a phylogenetic approach. Ruth Mace,
Clare J. Holden, and Steven Shennan, eds. Pp. 235–256.
London: UCL.
Pearson, H. 1957. The economy has no surplus. In Trade and
market in the early empires. Karl Polanyi, Conrad M. Ar-
ensberg, and Harry W. Pearson, eds. Pp. 320–341. New
York: Free Press.
Peristiany, J. 1939. The social institutions of the Kipsigis. Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press.
Pluzhnikov, A., D. Nolan, Z. Tan, M. McPeek, and C. Ober.
2007. Correlation of intergenerational family sizes suggests
a genetic component of reproductive fitness. American
Journal of Human Genetics 81:165–169.
Price, T. 1995. Agricultural origins and social inequality. In
Foundations of social inequality. T. D. Price and G. M. Fein-
man, eds. Pp. 129–151. New York: Plenum.
Reher, D., J. Ortega, and A. Sanz-Gimeno. 2008. Intergen-
erational transmission of reproductive traits in Spain dur-
ing the demographic transition. Human Nature 19:23–43.
Richards, J. 1993a. The Mughal Empire. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press.
———. 1993b. The new Cambridge history of India I–5: the
Mughal Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
83
Rostain, S. 2008. Agricultural earthworks on the French Gui-
ana coast. In Handbook of South American archaeology. H.
Silverman and W. Isbell, eds. Pp. 217–234. New York:
Springer.
Saller, R. 1994. Patriarchy, property and death in the Roman
family. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Sanday, P. 1981. Female power and male dominance. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Scarborough, V. 2003. The flow of power: ancient water systems
and landscapes. Santa Fe, NM: SAR.
Scott, S., and C. Duncan. 2002. Demography and nutrition:
evidence from historical and contemporary populations. Mal-
den, MA: Blackwell Science.
Service, E. 1962. Primitive social organization: an evolutionary
perspective. New York: Random House.
———. 1975. Origins of the state and civilization: the process
of cultural evolution. New York: Norton.
Sharma, U. 1993. Dowry in North India: its consequences for
women. In Family, kinship and marriage in India. Patricia
Uberoi, ed. Pp. 341–356. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shenk, M. 2004. Embodied capital and heritable wealth in
complex cultures: a class-based analysis of parental invest-
ment in urban South India. In Socioeconomic Aspects of
Human Behavioral Ecology. Special issue, Research in Eco-
nomic Anthropology 23:307–333.
———. 2005. Kin networks in wage-labor economies: effects
on child and marriage market outcomes. Human Nature
16:81–114.
Smith, Eric Alden, Kim Hill, Frank W. Marlowe, David Nolin,
Polly Wiessner, Michael Gurven, Samuel Bowles, Monique
Borgerhoff Mulder, Tom Hertz, and Adrian Bell. 2010.
Wealth transmission and inequality among hunter-gath-
erers. Current Anthropology 51(1):19–34.
Stein, G. 2001. Understanding ancient state societies in the
Old World. In Archaeology at the millennium: a sourcebook.
G. Feinman and T. Price, eds. Pp. 353–380. New York:
Springer.
Voland, E., and R. Dunbar. 1995. Resource competition and
reproduction: the relationship between economic and pa-
rental strategies in the Krummhörn population
(1720–1874). Human Nature 6:33–49.
Wenke, R. 1984. Patterns in prehistory: humankind’s first three
million years. 2nd edition. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Wittfogel, K. 1957. Oriental despotism: a comparative study of
total power. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Wolf, E. 1966. Peasants. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Conclusions
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010 85

Intergenerational Wealth Transmission and

Inequality in Premodern Societies

Production Systems, Inheritance, and

Inequality in Premodern Societies
Conclusions

by Eric Alden Smith, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Samuel Bowles,

Michael Gurven, Tom Hertz, and Mary K. Shenk

CA⫹ Online-Only Supplement: Estimating the Inheritance of Wealth in Premodern Societies

Premodern human societies differ greatly in socioeconomic inequality. Despite much useful theorizing
on the causes of these differences, individual-level quantitative data on wealth inequality is lacking.
The papers in this special section provide the first comparable estimates of intergenerational wealth
transmission and inequality in premodern societies, with data on more than 40 measures of embodied,
material, and relational wealth from 21 premodern societies representing four production systems
(hunter-gatherers, horticulturalists, pastoralists, and agriculturalists). Key findings include (1) the
importance of material, embodied, and relational wealth differs significantly across production sys-
tems, with material wealth more important in pastoral and agricultural systems; (2) the degree of
wealth transmission from parent to offspring is markedly higher for material wealth than embodied
and relational wealth; (3) aggregate wealth is transmitted to a higher degree among pastoralists and
agriculturalists; (4) the degree of inequality is greater for material wealth; and (5) the degree of
intergenerational transmission of wealth is correlated with wealth inequality. Surprisingly, horticul-
turalists exhibit no greater wealth inequality or intergenerational wealth transmission than do hunter-
gatherers, while pastoralists are very similar to agriculturalists. We discuss how these trends may have
favored the emergence of institutionalized inequality, as intensified forms of production made material
wealth transmission increasingly important.

The papers in this special section apply a uniform analytical
approach to a diverse set of premodern societies, production
systems, and wealth measures. The theoretical framework and
methods are presented in the introductory paper, and the
Eric Alden Smith is Professor in the Department of Anthropology
at the University of Washington (Box 353100, Seattle, Washington
98195-3100, U.S.A. [easmith@u.washington.edu]). Monique Bor-
gerhoff Mulder is Professor in the Department of Anthropology and
the Graduate Group in Ecology at the University of California, Davis
(Davis, California 95616, U.S.A.). Samuel Bowles is Research Pro-
fessor and Director of the Behavioral Sciences Program at the Santa
Fe Institute (1399 Hyde Park Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501,
U.S.A.) and Professor of Economics at the University of Siena.
Michael Gurven is Associate Professor of Anthropology in the In-
tegrative Anthropological Sciences Program of the University of Cal-
ifornia, Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara, California 93106, U.S.A.).
four empirical papers present and discuss the results for each
of the production systems. Here we summarize the key find-
ings and emergent patterns, assess what we have learned from
this attempt to apply formal theory and consistent quanti-
tative methods to understanding wealth transmission and in-
equality in premodern societies, and discuss possible avenues
for further research.
These essays, and our project in general, offer three main
contributions to comparative social science. First, we provide
Tom Hertz is Visiting Professor of Economics at the International
University College of Turin (Piazza Carlo Felice 18, 10121, Torino,
Italy). Mary K. Shenk is Assistant Professor in the Department of
Anthropology of the University of Missouri (107 Swallow Hall, Co-
lumbia, Missouri 65211-1440, U.S.A.). This paper was submitted 12
V 09 and accepted 21 VII 09.

䉷 2010 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2010/5101-0008$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/649029
 86
data on a large number of societies, measuring many kinds
of wealth in a consistent and rigorous fashion. Earlier com-
parative studies (e.g., Jorgensen 1980; Murdock 1981; Pryor
2005) have relied on qualitative ethnographic assessments of
wealth variables at the societal level. Wealth transmission and
inequality are typically indicated for a particular society using
an ordinal scale, based on the ethnographer’s impression
rather than on actual measurements. Individual ethnographic
studies of premodern wealth transmission (and comparable
studies by historians and archaeologists) sometimes present
quantitative data, but these are rarely comparable across so-
cieties. Recent studies by economic historians have provided
valuable quantitative measures of inequality (if not intergen-
erational transmission of wealth) for many ancient state-
organized agricultural and commercial societies (Milanovic,
Lindert, and Williamson 2007) but not for the small-scale
populations that we study here. By contrast, in this project
we have employed a uniform set of methods to analyze quan-
titative individual-level data on multiple forms of wealth in
a wide range of premodern production systems.
Second, this project systematically broadens the definition
of wealth in ways appropriate to premodern, nonmonetized
economies. As detailed in the preceding papers in this forum,
we consider not only standard forms of material wealth such
as land, livestock, and household goods but also various forms
of embodied wealth (weight, strength, knowledge and skills,
and reproductive success) as well as relational wealth (number
of network links in various domains, such as exchange, al-
liance, and cooperative labor). This broader set of wealth
measures should enhance our ability to develop an improved
understanding of wealth transmission and inequality in pre-
modern societies.
Third, we empirically document and analyze systematic
links between production systems, intergenerational trans-
mission of specific types of wealth, and varying degrees of
inequality. It is to these linkages that we now turn.
Wealth Transmission
Wealth Classes
The introductory paper in this section (Bowles, Smith, and
Borgerhoff Mulder 2010, in this issue) discusses our expec-
tations concerning patterns of intergenerational wealth trans-
mission. For reasons outlined there, we expect the degree of
intergenerational transmission to differ markedly among our
three wealth classes, with material wealth being more readily
transmitted than embodied and relational wealth. Examina-
tion of the transmission coefficients (b’s) for the three wealth
classes, averaged across all production systems, reveals that
this is the case: the average b for material wealth (0.37) is
three times as great as that for embodied wealth (b p 0.12)
and nearly twice as great as that for relational wealth (b p
0.19); these differences are both statistically significant (P !
.05).
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
Embodied wealth. The 23 estimates of the intergenerational
transmission of embodied wealth average 0.12 but range
widely (as detailed in the paper on each production system).
The highest estimates are for body weight (average b p
0.37). Most of these estimates come from hunter-gatherer
populations; given the widespread food sharing found in
many of these populations, access to food is unlikely to ac-
count for much of the parent-offspring weight relationship,
and genetic variation may play a role (see Smith et al. 2010,
in this issue). In contrast, reproductive success (number of
offspring surviving to age 5) generally has very low trans-
mission coefficients; b is effectively 0 in three societies, has a
maximum value of 0.21 (among Kipsigis, a highly polygynous
society where landholdings strongly determine number of
wives [Borgerhoff Mulder 1990]), and averages 0.09, similar
to low correlations between parental and offspring fertility
found in many predemographic transition populations (Mur-
phy 2007). Our measure of reproductive success is, of course,
also a measure of fitness, which is not expected to be highly
heritable at or near evolutionary equilibrium (Fisher 1958),
although certain populations show considerable additive ge-
netic variance in key life-history traits such as fecundity (Pet-
tay et al. 2005). In most cases, knowledge and skill, such as
agricultural production among the Pimbwe, proficiency in
subsistence tasks and cultural knowledge in the Tsimane, and
foraging success among the Ache and Hadza, are only weakly
transmitted from parents to offspring; the exception to this
is hunting success among the Tsimane (b p 0.38).
Relational wealth. We have six estimates of relational wealth
transmission. To the extent that these are representative, they
indicate that intergenerational transmission for this wealth
class is moderate, with b averaging 0.19 and ranging widely
(0.04–0.34). We suspect that the transmission of relational
wealth will depend entirely on the type of network involved.
In societies with a high degree of status differentiation, in-
cluding most with intensive agriculture, the options for im-
proving one’s network beyond that of one’s parents would
seem to be quite limited, whereas in a more “open” social
field, an enterprising individual might generate a large net-
work of allies unhampered by the limitations of one’s parents
in this respect. However, our sample of relational wealth mea-
sures is too small and varied to evaluate this argument.
Material wealth. The average b is 0.37 for 14 measures of
material wealth, including agricultural and horticultural land,
livestock, shares in sea mammal–hunting boats, and house-
hold goods. For agricultural land, the degree of transmission
is substantial, averaging 0.53 across four populations. Live-
stock are also highly transmitted across generations in our
four pastoral populations, with b’s averaging 0.67. These es-
timates for material wealth transmission in premodern so-
cieties equal or exceed the intergenerational transmission of
most forms of wealth in industrialized market economies
(Charles and Hurst 2003). High transmission levels would
Smith et al. Production Systems, Inheritance, and Inequality in Premodern Societies: Conclusions
appear to reflect the greater degree to which access to material
wealth can be controlled, interacting with cultural norms re-
garding property rights and inheritance, as discussed in our
concluding section. Variability in transmission levels across
types of material wealth is likely due to at least two factors.
First, wealth types that are subject to economies of scale are
likely to show higher b’s than wealth types that do not produce
increasing returns to investment (Borgerhoff Mulder et al.
2009). Thus we find that some of our highest b’s are for
livestock wealth, and in a population where both livestock
and land are measured (Kipsigis), the b for livestock is almost
double that for land. Second, if material wealth is associated
with higher fertility (and thus more heirs), wealth will become
diluted across generations (resulting in lower estimates of b).
Comparison of Production Systems
Although wealth classes differ in the constraints and oppor-
tunities they present for intergenerational transmission, we
also expect that the relative importance of these wealth classes
will vary across production systems. Ethnographic evidence
(some of it summarized in the preceding papers) suggests that
hunter-gatherers and horticulturalists depend heavily on
strength, knowledge, and social networks to be successful,
while making little use of material resources that are not
widely available. By contrast, the well-being of a herder or
farmer depends heavily on the amount of stock or land under
his or her command, and these forms of wealth are scarce
(relative to demand), making material wealth a more im-
portant influence on livelihoods in these production systems.
We drew on the judgments of ethnographers participating
in this project to quantify the importance of each wealth class
in each population in the sample, a parameter we label a.
This parameter indicates the expected percentage difference
in household well-being associated with a 1% difference in
amount of a given wealth class, holding other wealth classes
constant at the average for that population and requiring these
percentage effects to sum to 100%. The values of a—the
relative importance of the three wealth classes (embodied,
material, and relational)—for each of the 21 societies studied
in this project, as well as averages for each production system,
are shown in figure 1. They suggest that embodied and re-
lational wealth are relatively important for foragers and hor-
ticulturalists, while material wealth is key in pastoral and ag-
ricultural populations.
These independently derived judgments are remarkably
similar within production systems (see preceding papers for
details). They are also consistent with broader ethnographic
accounts of how different production systems function (e.g.,
Johnson and Earle 2000). Subjective judgments of a are, of
course, only an interim solution but certainly far preferable
to ignoring differences in the relative importance of wealth
classes between populations and production systems. In ad-
dition, published data from eight agricultural populations in
Africa and South Asia allowed a statistical estimate of the
87
Figure 1. Relative importance of wealth classes (a) for individual
populations, averaged for production systems. See text for ex-
planation. The coordinates of each point in this ternary plot sum
to 1; thus, the importance of material wealth for any population
in the sample is given by the distance from the edge opposite
the Material vertex, and so on. The larger symbols indicate the
averages of each production system. A color version of this figure
is available in the electronic edition.
relative importance of material capital (a component of a)
for agriculturalists. The average estimate of this parameter is
0.56, not significantly different from the average of the eth-
nographers’ estimates for the eight agricultural populations
in our project (0.59). And since the sum of a components
from the three wealth classes must equal 1, this high value
for material wealth importance implies modest values for re-
lational and embodied wealth importance, consistent with our
estimates as well.
We use the production system and wealth class a values
to calculate weighted average transmission coefficient (b) val-
ues for the populations in each production system, as shown
in the rightmost entry in each panel of figure 2. These cal-
culations produce markedly different estimates for the four
production systems. Specifically, intergenerational transmis-
sion of wealth is modest in both hunter-gatherer and horti-
cultural systems (a-weighted average b’s of 0.19 and 0.18,
respectively) but quite substantial in agricultural (0.36) and
pastoral systems (0.43). Indeed, when we compare the b for
hunter-gatherers and horticulturalists averaged together with
the joint average for agropastoralists, we find a large (0.21)
and statistically significant (P ! .001) difference.
Thus, a key empirical finding of this project is that hor-
ticulturalists and hunter-gatherers are quite similar in their
patterns of wealth transmission: both transmit wealth at rel-
atively low rates and emphasize embodied and relational
wealth over material wealth. In contrast, pastoralists and in-
tensive agriculturalists rely heavily on land, livestock, tech-
nology, and other forms of material wealth and transmit this
at high rates. Although these findings are consistent with the
 88 Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010

Figure 2. Estimated intergenerational wealth transmission (b) by pro-

duction system and wealth class, including the importance of the (a)-
weighted average for each system. Vertical bars indicate standard errors;
a-weighted averages across wealth classes are calculated after weighting
each wealth type/production system mean by the a values shown in figure
1. The b for Kipsigis cattle partners is used to estimate the pastoral/
relational b as well as for calculating the pastoralist a-weighted average.
E p embodied wealth; R p relational wealth; M p material wealth.

conventional wisdom regarding property in different pro-
duction systems, this is the first time they have been dem-
onstrated empirically using consistent methods on a set of
fine-grained quantitative data from multiple populations. In
addition, there are several novel aspects to our results.
First, the lack of substantive difference in a-weighted b
averages of hunter-gatherer and horticultural populations im-
plies that the greater degree of wealth transmission (and as-
sociated inequality) in agropastoral systems is not due to re-
liance on domesticated plants and animals per se, since
horticulturalists also have such reliance. Rather, it likely is due
to the more intensive forms of production and the elaboration
of property rights associated with animal husbandry and in-
tensive agriculture, an argument we return to in our con-
cluding section.
Second, even the relatively small average b’s found among
forager and horticulturalist populations are not trivial; they
imply that the luck of being born into the top (or bottom)
of the wealth distribution confers quite significant advantages
(or disadvantages). Specifically, our estimates imply that a
child born into the highest wealth decile in hunter-gatherer
and horticultural societies is more than three times as likely
to end up in the top wealth decile as is a child born into the
bottom wealth decile (for details of this calculation, see the
CA⫹ online supplement “Estimating the Inheritance of
Wealth in Premodern Societies” in the online edition of Cur-
rent Anthropology). Yet this degree of intergenerational inertia
is modest compared to that in pastoral and agricultural so-
cieties, where the child from the richest decile is about 16
times more likely to remain there than a child from the poor-
est decile. For comparison, the degree of intergenerational
transmission of wealth in hunter-gatherer and horticultural
populations is similar to the intergenerational transmission
of monetary income in the Nordic social democratic countries
of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway (where b averages 0.18),
while the agricultural and pastoral societies are comparable
to the United States and Italy (average b p 0.43), the ad-
vanced economies in which inequalities are transmitted most
strongly across generations (Björklund and Jäntti 2009).
A third finding is that b for a particular wealth class varies
across production systems. Thus, material wealth is weakly
transmitted in foraging and horticultural populations (b p
0.13) but strongly transmitted in agricultural and pastoral
populations (b p 0.61). Similarly, both relational and em-
Smith et al. Production Systems, Inheritance, and Inequality in Premodern Societies: Conclusions
bodied wealth are transmitted at twice the rate in hunter-
gatherer and horticultural populations than in agricultural
and pastoral populations (fig. 2), although neither of these
differences is statistically significant. Further analysis of the
a-weighted average b’s shows that 45% of the large (namely,
0.21) and statistically significant difference (P ! .001) between
the average a-weighted b’s of the two categories of production
systems is accounted for by differences in the a’s across the
two pairs of production systems, holding the b for each class
of wealth at its mean across all production systems. The re-
maining 62% is due to differences in the b’s, holding each a
at its mean across all four production systems (for details of
this analysis, see the CA⫹ online supplement). This means
that while transmission of a given wealth type is partially
determined by its inherent features, transmission is also
strongly affected by the production system in which it is
embedded.
Finally, our comparative quantitative analysis shows that
the more important a wealth class is in a particular production
system (as estimated by a), the higher its degree of intergen-
erational transmission (b). This is clearest in the case of ma-
terial wealth: in pastoral and agricultural societies, its average
importance (a) is 0.60 and the average transmission coeffi-
cient (b) is 0.61, while in hunter-gatherer and horticultural
populations, a p 0.18 and b p 0.13. Similarly, embodied
wealth is about twice as important in hunter-gatherer and
horticultural societies as among pastoralists and agricultur-
alists, and the corresponding average b’s are equally divergent
(though not significantly so). In fact, the overall correlation
between the production system– and wealth class–specific
mean a’s and b’s is quite strong (fig. 3). This finding is
consistent with the hypothesis that parents seek to enhance
the success of their offspring by differentially transmitting to
them the forms of wealth that are most important in that
society (e.g., Hartung 1982; Holden, Sear, and Mace 2003).
In effect, it appears that parents are making a particular effort
to pass on to their offspring those forms of wealth that have
the highest marginal value for enhancing well-being.
Wealth Inequality
Are production systems in which wealth is more transmissible
also more unequal? To answer this question, we have used
the household-level data on various wealth measures in each
population to estimate Gini coefficients, a widely used mea-
sure of inequality that generates values from 0 (equal wealth)
to virtually 1 (all wealth held by a single household). The
Ginis for each wealth measure are provided in the preceding
papers in this special section; we use these to compute av-
erages for each wealth class in each production system (fig.
4). To calculate an overall measure of wealth inequality for a
given production system, we then weight the average in-
equality of each wealth class in that production system by its
importance (a).
These estimates of overall wealth inequality (rightmost en-
89
Figure 3. Relationship between the wealth class and production
system averages of wealth importance (a) and intergenerational
wealth transmission (b). The correlation is positive and signifi-
cant; r p 0.78, P ! .01.
try in each panel of fig. 4) exhibit the same pattern as the b
transmission coefficients (fig. 2). Specifically, hunter-gatherer
and horticultural populations both exhibit quite modest levels
of inequality (a-weighted average Ginis of !0.2), while pas-
toral and agricultural societies are characterized by more sub-
stantial average Ginis (ca. 0.4–0.5). This pattern is due to
several causes, but prominent among them is the higher de-
gree of inequality in material wealth that is characteristic of
all four production systems (fig. 4); this interacts with the
greater importance of material wealth (a) in pastoral and
agricultural populations to produce the higher aggregate in-
equality for these populations.
It is also very noteworthy that the degree of aggregate
wealth inequality is no greater in horticultural than in hunter-
gatherer populations and is correspondingly almost as high
among pastoralists as among agriculturalists. The high Gini
for pastoralists counters the commonly held although now
contested view that pastoralists are egalitarian (Salzman 1998;
Schneider 1979). As discussed by Borgerhoff Mulder et al.
(2010, in this issue), the ideological emphasis on egalitari-
anism, generosity, and leveling mechanisms does not in the
end produce an egalitarian distribution of wealth, particularly
material wealth.
To put these figures in perspective, the Ginis for foragers
and horticulturalists match the lowest values found for mod-
ern nations (Denmark’s 0.25, Finland’s 0.27), while the agro-
pastoral Ginis are comparable to those found in the United
States (0.41) and Venezuela (0.48; UNDP 2009; World Bank
2009).
It is worth noting that low Gini coefficients do not mean
everyone is the same. Among the Ju/’hoansi, for example,
 90 Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010

Figure 4. Extent of wealth inequality (Gini coefficients) by production

system and wealth class. Vertical bars indicate standard errors; the a-
weighted averages for each production system are calculated after weight-
ing each wealth type/production system mean by the a values shown in
figure 1. The Gini coefficient for Kipsigis cattle partners is used to estimate
the pastoral/relational Gini as well as for calculating the pastoralist a-
weighted average. E p embodied wealth; R p relational wealth; M p
material wealth.

equality does not mean sameness, and there is a great em-
phasis on groups having members with very different skills.
If one person in a group excels in one niche such as music,
healing, or a certain technique of hunting, others will give
him or her space and seek recognition in different areas; if
one person tries something new and succeeds, there is very
little direct imitation (Polly Wiessner, personal communi-
cation).
There is a reasonably strong correlation between intergen-
erational wealth transmission (b’s) and wealth inequality
(Gini coefficients) for the full set of wealth measures (fig. 5).
This is consistent with the arguments linking transmission
rates with inequality presented in the lead paper for this sec-
tion (Bowles, Smith, and Borgerhoff Mulder 2010). It is im-
portant to remember that the predicted association between
intergenerational transmission and inequality will be atten-
uated unless the wealth shocks to which individuals are ex-
posed differ across systems. The b-Gini association shown in
figure 5 suggests that variation in the magnitude and impact
of shocks averages out across our sample of 21 production
systems and 43 wealth types. Because we lack empirical data
on the magnitude and impact of shocks, and the smaller
sample sizes for each production system made the averaging
assumption problematic, we did not investigate these rela-
tionships within production systems.
Conclusions and Prospects
Summary of Key Findings
The set of papers in this special section advance an expla-
nation of variation in inequality across societies in terms of
differential intergenerational transmission of their most im-
portant kinds of wealth. They provide theoretical and em-
pirical reasons to support a series of linked claims: (1) the
importance of material, embodied, and relational wealth dif-
fers significantly across production systems, with material
wealth more important in pastoral and agricultural systems;
(2) the degree of wealth transmission differs markedly by
wealth type, with material wealth more highly transmitted
than embodied and relational; as a result, (3) aggregate wealth
is transmitted to a higher degree in pastoral and agricultural
populations; (4) the degree of inequality is greater for material
wealth than for embodied or relational wealth; and (5) the
Smith et al. Production Systems, Inheritance, and Inequality in Premodern Societies: Conclusions
Figure 5. Relationship between inequality (Gini coefficients) and
intergenerational transmission (b’s) for all wealth measures. Cor-
relation is positive and significant; r p 0.41 , P ! .01. The dashed
oval contains the points for body weight, which deviate from the
overall trend.
degree of intergenerational transmission of wealth is corre-
lated with the degree of inequality of wealth, both within
populations (e.g., by wealth measure or wealth class) and
across them (e.g., by production system). We thus conclude
that over the long run wealth inequality was minor in hunter-
gatherers and horticulturalists, at least in part because the
modest degree of transmission of the most important kinds
of wealth—embodied and relational—limited the accumu-
lation of inequalities from generation to generation. By con-
trast, in the pastoral and agricultural production systems that
displaced many forager and horticultural populations during
the Holocene, the high a-weighted b’s for material wealth
supported substantial levels of persistent (transgenerational)
inequality.
Prospects
This project on intergenerational wealth transmission in pre-
modern societies, summarized in this paper and detailed in
the preceding four papers on specific populations and pro-
duction systems, explores new ground in ecological-economic
anthropology and comparative economics. Like any explor-
atory research, it raises more questions than it answers, and
it calls out for extension, replication, and critical evaluation.
In this final section, we briefly raise some likely directions for
such future work.
Wealth complementarity. Much of our analysis turns on the
differences in transmission rates (b) and importance (a) be-
tween categories of wealth (embodied, material, and rela-
tional). However, this does not imply that the levels of each
91
type of wealth held by an individual are uncorrelated or that
these wealth classes affect household well-being indepen-
dently. The Cobb-Douglas production function that under-
pins our use of a parameters defines aggregate wealth as a
weighted product of the levels of each wealth class (the weights
being the a’s), and as a result, the wealth classes are com-
plements. This means that the marginal product of each type
of wealth varies positively with the amount of other types of
wealth; for example, an increase in the size of one’s herd
contributes more to one’s aggregate wealth if one is healthy
than if one is not. The complementarity of wealth types pro-
vides one (among many) reasons to expect the distinct wealth
levels to be positively correlated, so that, for example, suc-
cessful hunters might have both greater reproductive success
and larger sharing networks. Further research is called for to
explore such complementarities and their role in fostering
inequality.
Relational wealth. One of our three wealth classes, relational
wealth, accounts for only six (14%) of our 43 wealth measures.
This mirrors the underrepresentation of quantitative measures
of relational capital in the anthropological literature. Clearly,
we need much more data on relational wealth and its eco-
logical and social context. As noted above, we suspect that
the transmissibility of relational wealth will depend both on
the specific kind of network involved and on the degree of
status differentiation in a given society.
Partible inheritance. Wealth types necessarily vary in the extent
to which they are partible or impartible, which raises two
issues, one concerning estimation of b and another concern-
ing inequality. With regard to the first, specifically, the effects
of primogeniture versus an equal wealth division on mea-
suring b, we need to consider potential sample biases and
possible associations between wealth and number of inheri-
tors. At one extreme, if all noninheriting sons exit the pop-
ulation, and if there is no correlation between wealth and
number of sons, then the b estimate will not be biased. But
if rich parents have more sons on average, and they all inherit
parental wealth and remain in the population, then b will be
overestimated. If only the disinherited sons of the poor em-
igrate (because disinherited sons of the rich have alternative
sources of wealth), then b will be underestimated (because
we have overstated the wealth of poor sons by missing those
who immigrate). There are, of course, many other combi-
nations, all of which require a more nuanced analysis.
With regard to the implications for inequality, partibility
of inheritance may be crucial. Impartible inheritance gener-
ates greater variance in second-generation wealth than does
partible inheritance, variance that may be important for de-
veloping and maintaining inequality. Indeed, a focus on par-
tibility and impartibility may suggest new research questions
we do not have room to address here (Paul Leslie, personal
communication). For example, do intrafamily inequalities in
the transmission of material, somatic, and relational wealth
 92
reinforce one another, or is intergenerational transmission
deployed strategically to compensate for such inequalities?
Pastoralism and agriculture. The similarity of pastoralists to
agriculturalists in wealth transmission and inequality mea-
sures could be due to the fact that several of the pastoralists
studied in this project are transhumant pastoralists, and many
engage in some farming (as is typical of lower-latitude pas-
toralists). However, it should be noted that less intensive
forms of cultivation, as reflected in the data on horticultur-
alists, exhibit a very different pattern that emphasizes em-
bodied wealth (especially somatic wealth) and relational
wealth over material wealth (figs. 1, 2; see also Gurven et al.
2010, in this issue). Our findings suggest an alternative in-
terpretation for the pastoralist-agriculturalist similarity in
wealth and inequality measures, namely, that their primary
reliance on certain forms of material wealth is part of a fun-
damental shift in wealth accumulation and intergenerational
transmission, with one result being increased inequality. This
is consistent with previous work suggesting that wealth trans-
mission and inheritance may motivate restricted fertility even
among high-fertility traditional pastoralists (Luttbeg, Borger-
hoff Mulder, and Mangel 2000; Mace 2000). More broadly,
this suggests that pastoralists and agriculturalists may reflect
two versions of an economic and productive strategy em-
phasizing material wealth coupled with household or lineage
property rights; depending on the regional ecology and com-
petition with other populations, some emphasize pastoralism
and others intensive agriculture.
Emergence of institutionalized inequality. Our finding that the
overall intergenerational transmission of wealth is no greater
in horticultural than in hunter-gatherer populations is pro-
vocative. It suggests that, contrary to the many models of the
emergence of institutionalized inequality, the domestication
of plants and animals per se may not have been sufficient.
Instead, persistent inequality may have depended on subse-
quent developments associated with intensified forms of cul-
tivation and animal husbandry represented by agriculture and
pastoral livelihoods. Among these developments, we would
argue that increased economic defensibility is critical. Eco-
nomic defensibility refers to sufficient density and spatiotem-
poral predictability of resources to repay the costs of terri-
toriality—that is, the defense of property by individuals or
kin groups (Cashdan 1992; Dyson-Hudson and Smith 1978).
Horticulturalists rely on domesticates, but this production
system is characterized by abundance of land relative to labor
and, hence, low payoffs to defending property rights at the
household level (Harrell 1997). Only when land becomes
scarce enough can it repay the social and economic costs of
excluding some members of one’s group in order to retain
long-term control of arable land. This scarcity in turn drives
technological and ecological investment such as plowing, ir-
rigation, and terracing, which increase the incentive for con-
trol and transmission to descendants.
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
If plant and animal domestication is not sufficient to stim-
ulate institutionalized inequality, it is also not always neces-
sary. Ethnographers and archaeologists have long noted the
existence in various times and places of hierarchical hunter-
gatherer societies with marked inequalities in wealth and
status (Arnold 1996; Hayden 1994; Kelly 1995; Price and
Brown 1985)—cases that are an embarrassment for simplistic
correlations of subsistence mode and sociopolitical factors.
Although extant hunter-gatherer populations do not include
any hierarchical systems and therefore none could be included
in our sample populations, the ethnography leaves little doubt
that if their b’s and Ginis could be measured, they would be
substantial. The best-described examples of such hierarchical
foragers are the various societies of the North Pacific Rim,
from Aleut to Coast Salish. Most focused their subsistence
production on rich marine resources, particularly salmon
runs; and again, the density and spatiotemporal predictability
(hence, economic defensibility) of key resources, enhanced in
this case by fish traps and extensive storage, would reward
the defense and intergenerational transmission of property
rights, favoring the emergence of persistent inequality.
The egalitarian ethos of most hunter-gatherer societies in
the ethnographic record (Boehm 2000) and the limited wealth
inequalities in our hunter-gatherer estimates are consistent
with the view that, at least prior to some 20,000 years ago,
economic inequalities between families were quite limited.
Although scattered evidence of economic inequality predates
the Holocene (Formicola 2007; Pettitt and Bader 2000; Soffer
1989; Vanhaeren and d’Errico 2005), the Holocene saw the
emergence of permanent inequality in many populations,
eventually culminating in the rise of class societies and the
hierarchical ancient states (Ames 2007; Carneiro 1970; Price
1995; Wright 1978). Our model and accompanying empirical
evidence suggest that the modest degree of intergenerational
transmission of hunter-gatherers’ most important kinds of
wealth—embodied and relational—limited the accumulation
of inequalities from generation to generation. In contrast, the
new forms of wealth that resulted from the domestication of
plants and animals were highly heritable, as discussed above.
As a result, where economic institutions and social norms
permitted intergenerational transmission, the inequalities of
one generation could be reproduced in the next, accounting
(at least in part) for the fact that the pastoral and agricultural
production systems that replaced many forager and horti-
cultural societies supported substantial levels of persistent
inequality.
In sum, our findings resonate with the argument that con-
trolling access to economically defensible resources such as
intensively worked land or other scarce resource-producing sites
(e.g., salmon streams, livestock herds, trade routes) is a potent
contributor to the emergence and persistence of high levels
of inequality (Boone 1992). Whatever the fate of this partic-
ular argument, we believe rigorous analysis of this and other
accounts of the emergence and dynamics of institutionalized
inequality in human societies will benefit from use of system-
Smith et al. Production Systems, Inheritance, and Inequality in Premodern Societies: Conclusions
atic quantitative measures of individual-level wealth trans-
mission such as the ones developed in this project. In addition,
theory building and improved understanding of these critical
issues will require greater integration of economic and evo-
lutionary approaches, a goal to which we have made a modest
contribution here.
Acknowledgments
Financial support for this research was provided by the Be-
havioral Sciences Program of the Santa Fe Institute and the
U.S. National Science Foundation. We are grateful to Patrizio
Piraino and Suresh Naidu for help with the figures and to
Adrian Bell and Bret Beheim for quantitative support. Finally,
we thank the other participants in this project for the sus-
tained intellectual, relational, and material contributions they
have made.
References Cited
Ames, Kenneth. 2007. The archaeology of rank. In Handbook
of archaeological theories. R. A. Bradley, D. G. Maschner,
and C. Chippendale, eds. Pp. 487–513. Lanham, MD:
AltaMira.
Arnold, Jeanne E. 1996. The archaeology of complex hunter-
gatherers. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 3:
77–126.
Björklund, Anders, and Markus Jäntti. 2009. Intergenerational
income mobility and the role of family background. In
Oxford handbook of economic inequality. Wiemer Salverda,
Brian Nolan, and Timothy M. Smeeding, eds. Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press.
Boehm, Christopher. 2000. Hierarchy in the forest. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Boone, James L. 1992. Competition, conflict, and the devel-
opment of social hierarchies. In Evolutionary ecology and
human behavior. Eric Alden Smith and Bruce Winterhalder,
eds. Pp. 301–337. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter.
Borgerhoff Mulder, Monique. 1990. Kipsigis women’s pref-
erences for wealthy men: evidence for female choice in
mammals? Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 27:255–264.
Borgerhoff Mulder, Monique, Samuel Bowles, Tom Hertz,
Adrian Bell, Jan Beise, Greg Clark, Ila Fazzio, et al. 2009.
Intergenerational transmission of wealth and the dynamics
of inequality in small-scale societies. Science 326(5953):
682–688.
Borgerhoff Mulder, Monique, Ila Fazzio, William Irons, Rich-
ard McElreath, Samuel Bowles, Adrian Bell, Tom Hertz,
and Leela Hazzah. 2010. Pastoralism and wealth inequality:
revisiting an old question. Current Anthropology 51(1):
35–48.
Bowles, Samuel, Eric Alden Smith, and Monique Borgerhoff
Mulder. 2010. The emergence and persistence of inequality
in premodern societies: introduction. Current Anthropology
51(1):7–17.
93
Carneiro, Robert L. 1970. A theory of the origin of the state.
Science 169:733–738.
Cashdan, Elizabeth. 1992. Spatial organization and habitat
use. In Evolutionary ecology and human behavior. Eric Alden
Smith and Bruce Winterhalder, eds. Pp. 237–266. Haw-
thorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter.
Charles, Kerwin K., and Erik Hurst. 2003. The correlation of
wealth across generations. Journal of Political Economy 111:
1155–1182.
Dyson-Hudson, Rada, and Eric Alden Smith. 1978. Human
territoriality: an ecological reassessment. American Anthro-
pologist 80:21–41.
Fisher, Ronald A. 1958. The genetical theory of natural selection.
2nd edition. New York: Dover.
Formicola, Vincenzo. 2007. From the Sunghir children to the
Romito dwarf: aspects of the Upper Paleolithic funerary
landscape. Current Anthropology 48(3):446–453.
Gurven, Michael, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Paul L.
Hooper, Hillard Kaplan, Robert Quinlan, Rebecca Sear, Eric
Schniter, et al. 2010. Domestication alone does not lead to
inequality: intergenerational wealth transmission among
horticulturalists. Current Anthropology 51(1):49–64.
Harrell, Stevan. 1997. Human families. Boulder, CO: West-
view.
Hartung, John. 1982. Polygyny and inheritance of wealth.
Current Anthropology 23:1–12.
Hayden, Brian. 1994. Competition, labor, and complex
hunter-gatherers. In Key issues in hunter-gatherer research.
Ernest S. Burch Jr. and Linda J. Ellanna, eds. Pp. 223–233.
Oxford: Berg.
Holden, Clare J., Rebecca Sear, and Ruth Mace. 2003. Ma-
triliny as daughter-biased investment. Evolution and Hu-
man Behavior 24(2):99–112.
Johnson, Allen W., and Timothy Earle. 2000. The evolution
of human societies: from foraging group to agrarian state.
2nd edition. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Jorgensen, Joseph G. 1980. Western Indians: comparative en-
vironments, languages, and cultures of 172 Western American
Indian tribes. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.
Kelly, Robert L. 1995. The foraging spectrum: diversity in
hunter-gatherer lifeways. Washington, DC: Smithsonian
Institution.
Luttbeg, Barney, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, and Marc
Mangel. 2000. To marry again or not? a dynamic model
for demographic transition. In Adaptation and human be-
havior: an anthropological perspective. Lee Cronk, Napoleon
Chagnon, and William Irons, eds. Pp. 345–368. New York:
Aldine de Gruyter.
Mace, Ruth. 2000. An adaptive model of human reproductive
rate where wealth is inherited: why people have small fam-
ilies. In Adaptation and human behavior: an anthropological
perspective. Lee Cronk, Napoleon Chagnon, and William
Irons, eds. Pp. 261–281. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
Milanovic, Branko, Peter H. Lindert, and Jeffrey G. William-
 94
son. 2007. Measuring ancient inequality. Policy Research
Working Paper 4412. World Bank, Washington, DC.
Murdock, G. P. 1981. Atlas of world cultures. Pittsburgh, PA:
University of Pittsburgh Press.
Murphy, Michael. 2007. Is the relationship between fertility
of parents and children really weak? Social Biology 46:
122–145.
Pettay, Jenni E., Loeske E. B. Kruuk, Jukka Jokela, and Virpi
Lummaa. 2005. Heritability and genetic constraints of life-
history trait evolution in preindustrial humans. Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 102:
2838–2843.
Pettitt, Paul B., and Nicolai O. Bader. 2000. Direct AMS ra-
diocarbon dates for the Sungir mid Upper Palaeolithic buri-
als. Antiquity 74(284):269–270.
Price, T. Douglas. 1995. Social inequality at the origins of
agriculture. In Foundations of social inequality. T. Douglas
Price and Gary M. Feinman, eds. Pp. 129–151. New York:
Plenum.
Price, T. Douglas, and James A. Brown, eds. 1985. Prehistoric
hunter-gatherers: the emergence of cultural and social com-
plexity. New York: Academic Press.
Pryor, Frederic L. 2005. Economic systems of foraging, agri-
cultural, and industrial societies. New York: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press.
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
Salzman, Philip C. 1998. Is inequality universal? Current An-
thropology 40:31–61.
Schneider, Harold K. 1979. Livestock and equality in East Af-
rica: the economic basis for social structure. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press.
Smith, Eric Alden, Kim Hill, Frank W. Marlowe, David Nolin,
Polly Wiessner, Michael Gurven, Samuel Bowles, Monique
Borgerhoff Mulder, Tom Hertz, and Adrian Bell. 2010.
Wealth transmission and inequality among hunter-gath-
erers. Current Anthropology 51(1):19–34.
Soffer, Olga. 1989. Storage, sedentism and the Eurasian Pa-
laeolithic record. Antiquity 63:719–732.
UNDP (United Nations Development Program). 2009. Hu-
man Development Report 2009. http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/
indicators/161.html (accessed November 29, 2009).
Vanhaeren, Marian, and Francesco d’Errico. 2005. Grave
goods from the Saint-Germain-la-Rivière burial: evidence
for social inequality in the Upper Palaeolithic. Journal of
Anthropological Archaeology 24:117–134.
World Bank. 2009. World development indicators. Washington,
DC: World Bank.
Wright, Henry T. 1978. Toward an explanation of the origin
of the state. In Origins of the state: the anthropology of
political evolution. Ronald Cohen and Elman Rogers Ser-
vice, eds. Pp. 49–68. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study
of Human Issues.
Comments & Reply
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
Comment: Intergenerational Wealth Transmission
and Inequality in Premodern Societies
Comments on the Emergence and
Persistence of Inequality in
Premodern Societies
Kenneth M. Ames
Department of Anthropology, Portland State University, P.O. Box
751, Portland, Oregon 97207, U.S.A. (amesk@pdx.edu). 14 X 09
This set of stimulating papers undertakes one of the central
tasks of the human sciences: explaining the origins, evolution,
and persistence of permanent inequality in human societies.
The papers test the hypothesis that intergenerational wealth
transmission is a key—if not the key—process in the persis-
tence and evolution of inequality. Crucial to their test is how
wealth is transmitted, the degree to which it accumulates or
erodes across generations, and the forms it can take. They
identify three broad categories of wealth: material, relational,
and embodied. Material wealth equates with our common
definition of wealth (e.g., land, livestock, jewelry, slaves); re-
lational wealth refers to an individual’s “social value” but is
essentially a person’s place in social networks, including the
number of connections they have. Embodied wealth includes
somatic wealth (health, strength) but is also knowledge and
skills. The papers incorporate reproductive success as a mea-
sure of embodied wealth rather than as a consequence of it.
These classes of wealth take different forms, occur in different
proportions, and have different relationships in different so-
cieties, contributing to the variety and complexity of evolu-
tionary trajectories and social forms. The authors of these
papers investigate this variability by looking at case studies
from four broad classes of food procurement economies:
hunter-gatherer, horticultural, pastoralist, and intensive ag-
riculturalist. Rather than relying on ethnographic narrative,
their comparative work rests on quantifying intergenerational
wealth differences with a measure they label b and wealth
itself in the three wealth categories, using standard Gini
indexes.
The studies are far too rich in results to discuss them all
here. I focus on a few directly relevant to the archaeology of
inequality. Taken together, their most important results are
the changes across the four production modes in the kinds
䉷 2010 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2010/5101-0009$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/649536
95
of wealth present and how they are transmitted. Wealth
among hunter-gatherers and horticulturalists is primarily em-
bodied and relational, while among pastoralists and intensive
agriculturalists, it is principally material, suggesting that con-
trasts across these production modes in the strength of wealth
differences are the consequence of the predominant forms of
wealth being transferred rather than, for example, the pres-
ence or absence of economic surpluses. Large surpluses are
commonly invoked to explain why extreme levels of inequality
seem correlated primarily, although not always, with intensive
agriculture. In the absence of intensive agriculture, it becomes
necessary to invoke environmental richness and/or stability
to explain surplus production. These results appear to make
that argument unnecessary, shifting the explanatory focus to
the hows and whys of the evolution of material wealth.
I am concerned here primarily with the hunter-gatherer
study (Smith et al. 2010). The hunter-gatherer sample is small,
including only five groups: the Ache, Hadza, Ju’hoansi, La-
malera, and Meriam. Despite this small sample, the authors
are able to show that, even in classic “egalitarian” groups, the
children of wealthy parents are themselves more likely to be
wealthy, whatever form wealth takes, while the offspring of
poorer parents will themselves be poorer. Smith et al.’s Gini
coefficients, while not large, are not insubstantial, leading
them to question the stereotype of foragers as egalitarian and
little concerned with wealth. A study of dental wealth among
the Efe, Aka, and Mbuti (Hewlett and Walker 1991; Walker
and Hewlett 1990), who are generally epitomes of egalitarian
organization, although not cited by Smith et al., lends in-
dependent support for their conclusions. Walker and Hewlett
(1990) examined the dental health of members of all three
groups as a proxy measure of overall health. Healthy dentition
of course reflects a lifetime of health; bad teeth do not become
good teeth. Walker and Hewlett found that dental health var-
ied along two dimensions, gender and status. Women had
 96
poorer dentition than men. Men who were leaders (i.e., with
higher prestige) had significantly better teeth than did those
who were not leaders. Additionally, Aka leaders are, on av-
erage, 3 cm taller than the average Aka male (Hewlett 1988).
Walker and Hewlett propose that the gender differences reflect
women having more carbohydrates in their diets. There are
no visible prestige-based dietary differences. However, the
likelihood is that the prestige-related differences reflect greater
amounts of meat in the diet. High-prestige individuals come
from the largest patrilineages present in a camp, and the
resulting greater “kinship resources” affect a range of other
resources, including networks and what flows through them.
Walker and Hewlett hypothesize that the larger kin network
gives individuals lifelong access to a relatively greater range
of foods, including meat, which would contribute to sustained
dental health. In this case, embodied and relational wealth
interact. The point here, however, is that this case study pro-
vides additional empirical support for their conclusions,
which are a second important result of their work.
Further support for the importance of embodied wealth in
general comes not from hunter-gatherers but from Marmot’s
(2004) seminal studies of the health differences among people
in finely graded status systems: civil service bureaucracies in
which even people in immediately adjacent ranks have dif-
ferent levels of good health, with health declining as one goes
down the ranks. Of course, as these and other authors (e.g.,
Hajda 1984; Suttles 1960) note, some hunter-gatherers also
transfer material wealth, as on the Northwest Coast, where
massive amounts of material household wealth were trans-
ferred from generation to generation and could, under some
conditions, accumulate.
Smith et al.’s results have significant methodological im-
plications for archaeological efforts to track the evolution of
inequality. Archaeologists generally assume that egalitarianism
is the default human social organization in small-scale soci-
eties, and they take the absence of evidence for permanent
inequality as evidence for egalitarianism. Thus, the archae-
ology of egalitarianism is based on negative evidence. Evidence
for inequality is primarily material wealth (Ames 2007). De-
veloping archaeological evidence and samples for embodied
and relational wealth transfers will be difficult, as the Efe,
Mbuti, and Aka examples show. Thus, Bowles, Smith, and
Borgerhoff Mulder (2010) note that there is little or no evi-
dence of economic differentiation before 24,000 years ago.
Most researchers would probably agree that there really is not
much evidence before the Holocene. However, given these
papers, we should rephrase that to say that we do not see
much evidence of material wealth transfers before 24,000 and
that we simply do not know much of anything about em-
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
bodied or relational wealth transfers, which would likely be
the dominant forms of wealth transfers during the Late
Pleistocene.
The issue of archaeologically operationalizing the concepts
developed in these papers is not a small one. The samples are
small, and many classes of society, particularly among hunter-
gatherers, are poorly represented ethnographically, if at all.
The quantification techniques are not altogether transparent.
Applying their approach to complex hunter-gatherers, for ex-
ample, will require ethnography and ethnohistory but pri-
marily archaeology. I am also concerned that the shift in
wealth transfers from relational and embodied to material will
become reified into stages or culture types rather than being
a goad to research.
References Cited
Ames, Kenneth M. 2007. The archaeology of rank. In Hand-
book of archaeological theories. Robert A. Bentley, Herbert
D. G. Maschner, and Christopher Chippendale, eds. Pp.
487–514. Lanham, MD: AltaMira.
Bowles, Samuel, Eric Alden Smith, and Monique Borgerhoff
Mulder. 2010. The emergence and persistence of inequality
in premodern societies: introduction to the special section.
Current Anthropology 51(1):7–17.
Hajda, Yvonne. 1984. Regional social organization in the
Greater Lower Columbia, 1792–1830. PhD dissertation,
University of Washington, Seattle.
Hewlett, Barry. 1988. Sexual selection and paternal investment
among Aka Pygmies. In Human reproductive behavior.
Laura Betzig, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, and Paul Turek,
eds. Pp. 263–276. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hewlett, Barry, and Phillip L. Walker. 1991. Social status and
dental health among the Aka and Mbuti Pygmies. American
Anthropologist 93(4):943–944.
Marmot, Michael. 2004. The status syndrome: how social stand-
ing affects our health and longevity. New York: Holt.
Smith, Eric Alden, Kim Hill, Frank W. Marlowe, David Nolin,
Polly Wiessner, Michael Gurven, Samuel Bowles, Monique
Borgerhoff Mulder, Tom Hertz, and Adrian Bell. 2010.
Wealth transmission and inequality among hunter-
gatherers. Current Anthropology 51(1):19–34.
Suttles, Wayne. 1960. Affinal ties, subsistence and prestige
among the Coast Salish. American Anthropologist 62:
296–305.
Walker, Phillip L., and Barry S. Hewlett. 1990. Dental health
and social status among central African foragers and farm-
ers. American Anthropologist 92(2):383–398.
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
Comment: Intergenerational Wealth Transmission
and Inequality in Premodern Societies
Does It Matter What Form
Inheritance Takes?
Comments on Bowles, Smith, and Borgerhoff Mulder
James L. Boone
Anthropology Department, University of New Mexico, MSC 01
1040, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131, U.S.A. (jboone@unm
.edu). 13 X 09
This is a remarkable collection of articles reflecting a level of
cooperation and data sharing that is commonplace now in
the natural and physical sciences but is less so in anthropology.
The systematic focus on a single though broad issue—inher-
itance—and how it relates to the historical and evolutionary
development of inequality is also remarkable and calls to mind
efforts of a similar scope in the past, such as the 1966 “Man
the Hunter” conference.
In reading these articles, a couple of questions occurred to
me, and I will focus my comments on these. One question
is what kind of social or cultural phenomenon is inheritance?
Is it all one thing, and does that matter with regard to the
role of inheritance in the development of inequality? Like
“marriage,” “inheritance” seems to be the kind of technical
term that Sperber (1996:18–23) refers to as a “family resem-
blance notion.” In the case of marriage, a wide variety of
institutional forms share cross-culturally a family resemblance
that appears to be based on the unifying pattern of the spe-
cieswide tendency to form pair bonds. That is, some marriages
may not involve pair bonding, but it seems unlikely that
marriage would exist in any society if it were not for the
tendency for humans to form them. In contrast, there seems
to be a variety of underlying factors that result in offspring
benefiting from the wealth of parents and other family mem-
bers of the previous generation; these include parental in-
vestment and parental manipulation of offspring, competition
among siblings, and ideological appeals by the living to an-
cestral spirits (i.e., in which parents and other donors are not
actively involved in the process of “inheriting”). In some cases,
inheritance may not be an active strategy at all and might be
argued to constitute a form of by-product mutualism, as I
discuss below.
䉷 2010 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2010/5101-0010$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/649207
97
Some kinds of inheritance take the form of active strategies
on the part of parents, as in the case when it takes the form
of parental investment (PI). Trivers (1978 [1972]:55) defined
PI as any investment by the parent in an individual offspring
at the cost of the parent’s ability to invest in other offspring.
For example, in the case of the Portuguese nobility of the
medieval and early modern periods, I argued that inheritance
was restricted to eldest sons (Boone 1986). In this case, in-
heritance took the form of an active strategy that would qual-
ify as parental investment under the Trivers definition, since
land or moveable wealth granted to one offspring could not
also be given to another. But it was also a state strategy to
prevent the division and dissipation of entailed estates (which
could ultimately revert to the crown in cases of lineage ex-
tinction or treason on the part of the holders) into dozens
of heirs, who would all have to be dealt with separately. Five
hundred years later, in mid-nineteenth-century Portugal, the
constitutional monarchy passed a law called the Lei das Par-
tilhas, which forbade primogeniture in attempt to break the
power of large landed estate owners. Interestingly, these estates
were still largely intact at the time of the Revolution of 1974,
so it appears that primogeniture was in fact an active family
strategy to keep large landholdings intact.
There are other forms of inheritance in which descendents
benefit from their predecessors but that apparently do not
take the form of parental investment. For example, among
the Keatley Creek fishers cited by Bowles, Smith, and Bor-
gerhoff Mulder (2010), as well as other middle-range societies
such as the traditional Hopi and the Kwakiutl, all of the
descendents of a particular household or kin group inherit
use rights as a group, so this kind of inheritance does not
seem to qualify as a form of parental investment. In the Hopi
case, inheritance of use rights does seem to divide into pri-
mary and secondary lineages (Levy 1992), but it is not clear
that parents are instrumental in effecting this partitioning.
Rather, it appears that living descendants make claims through
 98
descendence from a common ancestor, and Levy even argues
that the successful underwriting of periodic ceremonials by
particular clans is crucial in justifying these claims on a con-
tinuing basis and that lacking the wherewithal to put on a
successful ceremonial can result in loss of the clan’s charter.
In short, in the Hopi case at least, “inheritance” effectively
seems to take the form of competition over limited land use
rights among a contemporary generation of claimants based
on appeal to ancestral precedence rather than a systematic
mechanism for passing property from parent to child. It is
possible that the partitioning of use rights between primary
and secondary lineages results from competition among sib-
ling claimants, although I do not know of any concrete proof
of that.
There is also a sense in which inheritance is a kind of
epiphenomenon that does not require the active participation
in transference between the donor and the heir and might be
thought of as something akin to by-product mutualism. For
example, an individual born in the late Neolithic inherits the
results of hundreds of generations of forest clearance and soil
preparation and conditioning. Bowles, Smith, and Borgerhoff
Mulder (2010) clearly define inheritance in terms of a trans-
ference of benefits between parent and child, so that example
does not necessarily apply. But consider the case of a family
moving to a new city, say, Austin, Texas, and the parents will
consider buying a house only in the best school district in
the city, where starting prices for houses are well over half a
million dollars. All the children of that family will benefit (or
not, as the case may be) from being in that school district,
as well as from living in a wealthy neighborhood in general
(in which case they benefit from the environment created by
their neighbors as well). But is buying that house parental
investment? Not according to the accepted definition intro-
duced by Trivers because one child benefiting from living in
that house will not take away from another benefiting as well.
Is it inheritance sensu Bowles, Smith, and Borgerhoff Mulder?
It would seem so because they define inheritance as any mech-
anism that links differences in parental wealth to differences
in offspring wealth. One possibility, which I offer only hy-
pothetically, is that this kind of inheritance resembles by-
product mutualism. The parents buy the house for their own
reasons—perhaps they want to signal their suitability as allies
by demonstrating their commitment to their children’s ed-
ucation. The children benefit (or not) simply because living
in a nice house in a good school district predicts success
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
(regardless of whether they end up inheriting that house)
better than living in a shack in a slum does.
A second kind of question that occurred to me is what
kind of explanation is it to claim that inheritance is key to
the development of social inequality, as Bowles, Smith, and
Borgerhoff Mulder (2010) do in their introduction? McGuire
and Netting (1982) argued in their case study that partible
inheritance among Swiss peasants was the key to an enduring
tendency toward equality (despite considerable though gen-
erationally ephemeral differences in wealth among households
in any particular generation). In reading these papers, it often
occurred to me that inheritance is really unfeasible unless
wealth can be accumulated, defended, and/or sequestered.
Further, in general, it seems to me that embodied and rela-
tional wealth are often the consequence of material wealth or
at least are not independent of material wealth. Put in met-
aphorical terms, it seems to me that inheritance is the cart
and sequesterability is the horse, as Smith et al. (2010) imply
in their conclusion.
References Cited
Boone, J. L. 1986. Parental investment and elite family struc-
ture in preindustrial states: a case study of medieval–early
modern Portuguese genealogies. American Anthropologist
88:859–878.
Bowles, S., E. A. Smith, and M. Borgerhoff Mulder. 2010. The
emergence and persistence of inequality in premodern so-
cieties: introduction to the special section. Current An-
thropology 51(1):7–17.
Levy, J. P. 1992. Orayvi revisited: social stratification in an
“egalitarian” society. Santa Fe, NM: School of American
Research.
McGuire, R., and R. M. Netting. 1982. Leveling peasants? the
maintenance of equality in a Swiss Alpine community.
American Ethnologist 9:269–290.
Smith, E. A., K. Hill, F. W. Marlowe, D. Nolin, P. Wiessner,
M. Gurven, S. Bowles, M. Borgerhoff Mulder, T. Hertz, and
A. Bell. 2010. Wealth transmission and inequality among
hunter-gatherers. Current Anthropology 51(1):19–34.
Sperber, D. 1996. Explaining culture: a naturalistic approach.
Oxford: Blackwell.
Trivers, R. L. 1978 (1972). Parental investment and sexual
selection. In Readings in sociobiology. T. Clutton-Brock and
P. H. Harvey, eds. Pp. 52–97. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
Comment: Intergenerational Wealth Transmission
and Inequality in Premodern Societies
Studying Wealth Transmission and
Inequality in Premodern Societies
Some Caveats
Dan Bradburd
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Clarkson
University, Potsdam, New York 13699, U.S.A. (sheep@clarkson
.edu). 12 X 09
Borgerhoff Mulder et al. (2010) cite work in which I used
quantitative data on herd size, anticipatory inheritance, and
household maturity to argue that among the Komachi and
other Southwest Asian pastoralists, a household’s economic
trajectory was largely set by the intergenerational transfer of
animals through inheritance. I also argued that if social mech-
anisms for redistribution of wealth were absent, the cumu-
lative outcome of random events causing severe herd loss—
drought, epidemic, and so on—was economic differentiation
(Bradburd 1982). I am gratified that their study supports my
findings. I have sympathy for and an interest in using data-
driven, quantified, comparative research to examine wealth
formation and to understand the role of transgenerational
wealth transfers for the creation and maintenance of eco-
nomic inequality. It is my impression that the results reported
here match our expectations for the importance and inher-
itability of material wealth in foraging, horticultural, and ag-
ricultural production systems and for the association of ma-
terial wealth with structured inequality. Still, I have concerns
about the arguments and methods embodied in this special
section, including aspects of the treatment of relational wealth,
the nature and size of the sample, the derivation of a, and a
failure to recognize the social nature of wealth, whatever its
guise.
To create a broad, comparative model for the emergence
and persistence of wealth inequality, the authors propose a
tripartite definition of “wealth”: material, relational, and em-
bodied (Bowles et al. 2010). I cannot here discuss embodied
or physical wealth, but I am concerned that focusing on the
number of relations or exchanges masks important distinc-
tions in the quality, nature, and function of these relations as
relational wealth. Komachi, whose vocabulary for wealth re-
䉷 2010 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2010/5101-0011$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/649423
99
vealed the salience of the material in their understanding of
it, still worked assiduously to build and maintain significant
relations both inside and outside the tribe. Wealthy Komachi
were well connected. Material wealth provided means and
opportunity to increase relational wealth, but relations pro-
vided means and opportunity to increase or secure material
wealth. Relations also engendered additional relations. Indeed,
material wealth and relational wealth seemed inseparable, a
circumstance recognized throughout Iranian society by the
phrase parti bazi, working one’s connections to one’s advan-
tage. But in the end, quality of ties, with whom, and how
strong may have been more important.
For low-density, high-mobility foragers, Smith et al.
(2010b) argue that material wealth is negligible, so the only
wealth, if it exists, is either relational or embodied. If, among
low-density foragers such as the Ju/’hoansi, relational wealth
is measured by partners with whom one shares food and labor
but hxaro exchanges (a marker of relational wealth) create
relations resulting in increases in “alternative residences, hunt-
ing success for men . . . and social competence” (Smith et al.
2010b:25), then I wonder what is really being measured here.
Indeed, if a coincidence of social competence and exchange
partners is to be expected, then it seems that the Ju/’hoansi
use of relational wealth to increase access to resources and
marriage partners seems quite similar to the Komachi prac-
tice, which has the same intent. Are relations wealth or a path
to it?
This makes the discussion of relational wealth in the sample
of horticultural societies more perplexing. In some horticul-
tural societies, there are structured asymmetries in numbers
of exchange partners or in the balance of the exchanges, lead-
ing to social, economic, and political differentiation. A big
man is a Big Man because he has a broader exchange network
and “more wealth . . . flows through him back into the com-
munity” (Meggitt 1967:22). Similarly, Friedman (1975)
showed how the Kachin converted more prestige into bride-
 100
wealth, which was exchanged for more wives, whose labor led
to increased production, bigger feasts, more prestige, higher
rank, more bridewealth, and so on. In these examples, rela-
tional wealth is converted to material wealth and, in Fried-
man’s example, embodied wealth as well. The authors of “Do-
mestication Alone Does Not Lead to Inequality” do not
discuss societies like these (Gurven et al. 2010). They are
almost certainly correct to assert that “extensive wealth ac-
cumulation and self-aggrandizing are atypical among egali-
tarian horticulturalists” (Gurven et al. 2010:52), but that is
rather like saying that after one eliminates all the tall members
of a population, everyone is short. The accumulation of re-
lations and the concomitant accumulation of labor are central
features of societies that are no longer egalitarian. I am not
entirely certain why there are no examples of this form of
relational wealth in the sample. Is it because no appropriately
quantifiable cases could be found for the sample or because
it is not, in fact, an inheritable form of wealth? I am left with
the uncomfortable feeling that that omission is a problem in
any study of the emergence of inequality.
This raises the issue of the sample. It is very small in toto
and more so for each adaptation on its own. Even so, some
of the sets of cases seem problematic. I am not sure that it
is appropriate to lump producers of bay leaves on Dominica—
rightly described as peasants (Gurven et al. 2010)—in the
same horticulturalist category as the Yanomamö and the Dani.
Conversely, I am delighted to see the inclusion of historical
data in the sample for agricultural societies, and I wonder
whether the range of cases could be expanded with further
archival research or examination of already published
material.
I admit that I am simply flabbergasted by a statement such
as “it is much harder to construct institutions to transmit
social ties and knowledge than to do so for material wealth”
(Smith et al. 2010b:31). Ownership is a social institution.
People own things because other members of a society rec-
ognize their rights. If a society has material wealth and trans-
mits it, then that occurs through social institutions. Religious
systems and kinship systems, among other institutions, trans-
mit social ties and knowledge, and they often appear to fa-
cilitate material transfer rather than vice versa. The authors’
claim seems extremely close to finding what you are looking
for while not seeing everything else that is around it. In a
similar vein, in the concluding essay, Smith et al. (2010a:86)
implicitly criticize earlier research on wealth transmission,
writing that “wealth transmission and inequality are typically
indicated for a particular society using an ordinal scale, based
on the ethnographer’s impression rather than on actual mea-
surements. . . . By contrast, in this project we have employed
a uniform set of methods to analyze quantitative individual-
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
level data.” However, in evaluating the importance of partic-
ular wealth types for each adaptive system, the authors have
drawn “on the judgments of ethnographers participating in
this project to quantify the importance of each wealth class
in each population in the sample, a parameter [they] label
a” (Smith et al. 2010a:87). Does assigning a number to an
ethnographer’s judgment make that judgment more quanti-
tative or, more important, more valid than the ethnographer’s
impression? All this leads me to wonder whether, rather than
collecting and analyzing a sample that fit their methods, the
authors might have done better to look at a much larger,
more inclusive sample of ethnographies, using them as the
basis for a comparative study of the ways in which wealth is
generated, transferred, maintained, and dispersed in the dif-
ferent adaptations.
References Cited
Borgerhoff Mulder, Monique, Ila Fazzio, William Irons, Rich-
ard L. McElreath, Samuel Bowles, Adrian Bell, Tom Hertz,
and Leela Hazzah. 2010. Pastoralism and wealth inequality:
revisiting an old question. Current Anthropology 51(1):
35–48.
Bowles, Samuel, Eric Alden Smith, and Monique Borgerhoff
Mulder. 2010. The emergence and persistence of inequality
in premodern societies: introduction to the special section.
Current Anthropology 51(1):7–17.
Bradburd, Daniel. 1982. Volatility of animal wealth among
Southwest Asian pastoralists. Human Ecology 10(1):85–106.
Friedman, Jonathan. 1975. Tribes, states and transformations.
In Marxist analysis and social anthropology. Maurice Bloch,
ed. Pp. 161–202. New York: Halsted.
Gurven, Michael, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Paul L.
Hooper, Hillard Kaplan, Robert Quinlan, Rebecca Sear, Eric
Schniter, et al. 2010. Domestication alone does not lead to
inequality: intergenerational wealth transmission among
horticulturalists. Current Anthropology 51(1):49–64.
Meggitt, Mervyn. 1967. The pattern of leadership among the
Mae-Enga of New Guinea. Anthropological Forum 2(1):
20–35.
Smith, Eric Alden, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Samuel
Bowles, Michael Gurven, Tom Hertz, and Mary K. Shenk.
2010a. Production systems, inheritance, and inequality in
premodern societies: conclusions. Current Anthropology
51(1):85–94.
Smith, Eric Alden, Kim Hill, Frank W. Marlowe, David Nolin,
Polly Wiessner, Michael Gurven, Samuel Bowles, Monique
Borgerhoff Mulder, Tom Hertz, and Adrian Bell. 2010b.
Wealth transmission and inequality among hunter-
gatherers. Current Anthropology 51(1):19–34.
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
Comment: Intergenerational Wealth Transmission
and Inequality in Premodern Societies
Measuring Inequality through the
Strength of Inheritance
Gregory Clark
Department of Economics, University of California, Davis,
California 95616, U.S.A. (gclark@ucdavis.edu). 12 X 09
Can we measure and explain the degree of social inequality
in societies simply by measuring, as these papers seek to do,
the association between the status or wealth of parents and
children? Why would we not measure inequality more directly
as the Gini coefficient or the variance of log wealth? The
purpose of this comment is to suggest that while the link
between parents’ and children’s wealth or status is an im-
portant and easily measured determinant of inequality, it will
not completely measure inequality or tell us fully about long-
run social mobility.
Some things about early societies are easy to measure, some
very difficult. In societies with labor markets, for example,
the material livings standard of the common person is infer-
able from a few individual wage observations (Clark 2007:
48–49). However, measuring inequality is difficult. Inequality
is about variance as opposed to means, and estimating var-
iance requires much more information. The papers of this
special section employ a simple alternative measure, b, in-
tended both to parsimoniously estimate early inequality and
to document and explain significant increases in inequality
with settled agriculture.
The reasoning is as follows. Suppose that we measure the
logarithm of the wealth of parents relative to average wealth
by y0 and that of children by y1. Then, we can estimate with
modest amounts of data the parameter b that connects these
two measures in the expression
y1 p by0 ⫹ u,
where u represents random shocks to relative wealth; (1 ⫺
b) measures the extent of “regression to the mean.” If
䉷 2010 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2010/5101-0012$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/649424
101
Var (y) is the variance of wealth in the population, then in
the long run,
Var (u)
Var (y) p ,
1 ⫺ b2
where Var (u) is the variance of the shocks to individual wealth
in each generation. If the sizes of wealth shocks are the same
across all societies, the variance of wealth will depend only
on how strongly children inherit their parents’ economic
status. As b approaches 1, inequality rapidly increases.
However, is it reasonable to assume that the shocks to
wealth are constant for societies of hunter-gatherers, shifting
cultivators, and settled agriculturalists (the implicit assump-
tion of Bowles, Smith, and Borgerhoff Mulder [2010])? There
are grounds to think that shocks got bigger in agrarian so-
cieties. The first is that the degree of voluntary redistribution
between the rich and the poor in agrarian societies is typically
small, whereas it is significant in hunter-gatherer societies (see,
e.g., Bliege Bird and Bird 1997; Kaplan et al. 1984). In pre-
industrial England, for example, before the eighteenth century
the poor largely subsisted on their labor income. Mandated
redistribution through parish governments and voluntary re-
distribution through charity were both inconsequential (Clark
2007:118). The second is that in agrarian societies, even com-
mon resources were often privatized. Access to common land,
fisheries, water power, and minerals was typically limited to
those with tradable “common rights.” In preindustrial En-
gland, for example, free-access common land was a tiny pro-
portion of the countryside by 1550, and such commons typ-
ically had little productive value (Clark and Clark 2001).
Hunter-gatherer or shifting cultivation societies, in contrast,
had many open-access resources. The third is that in settled
agrarian societies, individual talent and luck can produce a
potentially greater upward shock to wealth through success
in trade, manufacture, war, the church, the law, or govern-
ment. Bigger shocks can make inequality much greater in
 102
some societies than in others, in ways not revealed by mea-
sures of b alone.
The authors address this potential criticism by showing that
the Gini coefficient, where it can be measured, is correlated
with b (Smith et al. 2010, fig. 5). However, this correlation
is very weak, and there is for any given level of b an enormous
variation in the actual level of inequality in the society.
A second concern is that two societies with the same mea-
sured b might differ sharply in long-run mobility. One society
might have complete mobility, and the other might be divided
into permanent upper and lower classes. If the only deter-
minant of children’s wealth is the observed wealth of their
parents and if b ! 1 , then long-run mobility will be complete.
If we measure the connection between the log wealth of par-
ents and their descendents n generations forward, we would
find it to be
yn p b ny0 ⫹ u∗n.
As n becomes large, yn ≈ un∗ , where un∗ is a random shock. There
is a profound long-run equality. The descendents of kings and
beggars have equal expected wealth after a modest number
of generations.
However, we can easily construct a wealth determination
process that shows the same b linking adjacent generations
but with permanently segregated upper and lower classes. To
see this, assume that the initial generation’s wealth has two
components, so that
y0 p z ⫹ e 0 ,
where z is the systematic component, determined by social
class, and e0 is the random component. Suppose that z gets
faithfully transmitted between generations. Upper-class par-
ents have upper-class children. Then, the income of the next
generation will be
y1 p z ⫹ e 1.
What would the global connection between fathers’ and sons’
incomes look like in this case? If we regress y1 on y0, the
estimated b will be
Var (e)
bˆ p 1 ⫺ ,
Var (z) ⫹ Var (e)
where Var (e) is the variance of the idiosyncratic wealth of
each generation and Var (z) is the variance of the inherited
wealth component. If these variances were equal, b would be
estimated as 0.5. There will thus be the classic regression to
the mean. But this would be a society forever divided into
social classes differing by wealth. For the expected value of
b, the estimated connection
y2 p by0 ⫹ u 0
between grandparents and grandchildren will now be the same
as that between parents and children. Similarly, for parents
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
and more distant descendents, the b will be no smaller. After
one generation, there is no further regression to the mean.
There are persistent social classes.
Thomas Hertz (2005) found evidence of just such persis-
tence in the modern United States. Both the prosperous Jew-
ish population and the poor black population are not con-
verging toward the overall mean of income. Unless this
changes, many generations from now, Jewish Americans will
still be relatively rich and black Americans relatively poor. In
contrast, if social and economic mobility are tracked through
surnames, we see that medieval England between 1250 and
1550 showed complete social mobility, with no group per-
sisting at the top or the bottom of society (Clark 2009). Yet,
the overall b for wealth in preindustrial England was higher
than that in the modern United States. Thus, though mea-
suring b for different societies is a useful and informative
exercise, it cannot answer all questions about the degree of
inequality in societies and the nature of long-run social
mobility.
References Cited
Bliege Bird, Rebecca L., and Douglas W. Bird. 1997. Delayed
reciprocity and tolerated theft: the behavioral ecology of
food-sharing strategies. Current Anthropology 38(1):49–78.
Bowles, Samuel, Eric Alden Smith, and Monique Borgerhoff
Mulder. 2010. The emergence and persistence of inequality
in premodern societies: introduction to the special section.
Current Anthropology 51(1):7–17.
Clark, Gregory. 2007. A farewell to alms: a brief economic
history of the world. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
———. 2009. Was there ever a ruling class? a proposal for
the study of 800 years of social mobility. Working paper.
University of California, Davis.
Clark, Gregory, and Anthony Clark. 2001. The enclosure of
English common lands, 1475–1839. Journal of Economic
History 61(4):1009–1036.
Hertz, Thomas. 2005. Rags, riches and race: the intergener-
ational mobility of black and white families in the United
States. In Unequal chances: family background and economic
success. Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis, and Melissa Os-
borne, eds. Pp. 165–191. New York: Russell Sage.
Kaplan, Hillard, Kim Hill, Kristen Hawkes, and Ana Hurtado.
1984. Food sharing among the Ache hunter-gatherers of
eastern Paraguay. Current Anthropology 25:113–115.
Smith, Eric Alden, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Samuel
Bowles, Michael Gurven, Tom Hertz, and Mary K. Shenk.
2010. Production systems, inheritance, and inequality in
premodern societies: conclusions. Current Anthropology
51(1):85–94.
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
Comment: Intergenerational Wealth Transmission
and Inequality in Premodern Societies
Evolution Is Not Egalitarian
Mark V. Flinn
Department of Anthropology, University of Missouri, Columbia,
Missouri 65211, U.S.A. (flinnm@missouri.edu). 21 X 09
The birds who does have the feed will hum; those that isn’
got the feed wouldn’ be able to hum.
—Coconut villager, 1956 (Rodman 1971:xii)
Yahi yamako buhii makuwi, suw kb yamako buhii barowo!
(Even though we do like meat, we like women a whole lot
more!)
—Yanomamo male (Chagnon 1997:97)
The deep evolutionary roots of inequality are evident in our
complex hormonal and psychological responses to social
status and its profound effects on our health (Farmer 2004;
Flinn 2006). Like all other organisms, humans evolved to “use
the least energy and take the lowest risks in securing the
highest quality and quantity of resources and converting them
into their own genetic materials” (Alexander 1979:17). This
dictum from evolutionary biology is not easily translated into
human economics. Humans are extraordinarily social crea-
tures; we habitually gather, control, and redistribute resources
via group networks. Relationships trump individual material
utility. Marriage, kinship, and alliance are paramount. Among
humans, securing resources for reproduction involves social
power (Alexander 2006).
Michael Mann (1986, 1993), in his classic The Sources of
Social Power, identifies four primary resources: information
(ideology), economics (material goods), military (aggressive
force), and political (organizational). Mann’s scheme fits well
with the concept of wealth—including material, embodied,
and relational—proposed and analyzed in this special section.
But whereas Mann grounds the origins of inequality in power
differentials, Bowles, Smith, and Borgerhoff Mulder (2010)
suggest that transmissibility of wealth is key. Different types
of wealth are posited to have properties that affect transfer
from generation to generation. Some kinds of material wealth,
with greater permanence and controllability, are suggested to
have higher potential for disproportionate accumulation
among lineages over time. Greater disparities (higher Gini
䉷 2010 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2010/5101-0013$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/649565
103
index) may emerge with historical shifts in the balance among
the types of wealth—toward material and away from relational
and embodied.
The links between social power and wealth transfers are
embedded in several core aspects of human biology. Our spe-
cies is characterized by an unusual suite of life-history and
social characteristics, including (a) physically altricial (help-
less) infants; (b) long childhoods; (c) extensive biparental care,
including large transfers of information; (d) long lifetimes
with multiple overlapping generations; (e) extended, bilateral
kin networks, including life-long bonds among siblings and
other relatives; and (f) stable mating relationships and con-
sequent ties among affinal kin (for discussion, see Alexander
1990; Chapais 2008; Flinn et al. 2007). These aspects of our
biology influence patterns of parental and kin investment in
unique ways (Alexander 1987; Flinn and Low 1986), including
arranged marriages between kin-based coalitions (e.g., Chag-
non 1979).
Human biology also is characterized by an unusual suite
of information-processing characteristics, including (a) large
brains; (b) sociocognitive aptitudes such as empathy, theory
of mind, and self-awareness; (c) language; (d) complex social
learning; and (e) creativity (for review, see Geary 2005). These
mental attributes enable culture and the emergent changes in
subsistence and wealth distribution that are so impressively
documented in this special section.
The cultural development of resources that are accumulated
and transferred (inherited)—such as domesticated animals,
gold, royal status, fishing skills, and land ownership—may
codevelop with patterns of family and kinship, including
male/female bias (e.g., Fox 1972; Goody 1976; Hartung 1982).
Women and men often receive different kinds and amounts
of resources from their relatives, providing further oppor-
tunities for examining relations among types of wealth, in-
equality, and power structures that influence resource
transfers.
The issue of how to tease apart the transmissibility of re-
sources from social power remains perplexing. This problem
is shared with attempts to understand the development of
plant/animal domestication and complex social organization
 104
(e.g., Cohen 2009). Material wealth that appears constant—
for example, an acre of land—has changing utility based on
the behavior and motivations of the people using it. Embodied
and relational wealth—for example, warrior status—have
changing utility based on cultural context (Beckerman et al.
2009; Chagnon 1988). The material and the social have
seemed inextricably intertwined in cultural evolution regard-
less of how we attempted to categorize and measure them.
The breadth and quality of data examined in this forum,
however, have pushed the envelope in many exciting new
directions. The inclusion of measures of reproduction, an-
thropometrics, labor exchange, land ownership, hunting pro-
ductivity, and so forth (I stopped counting after noting 20
distinct measures!) is remarkable; that these measures are in-
tegrated into a coherent analytical and theoretical framework
is astonishing.
References Cited
Alexander, R. D. 1979. Darwinism and human affairs. Seattle:
University of Washington Press.
———. 1987. The biology of moral systems. Hawthorne, NY:
Aldine.
———. 1990. How did humans evolve? reflections on the
uniquely unique species. Museum of Zoology Special Pub-
lication 1. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan.
———. 2006. The challenge of human social behavior. Evo-
lutionary Psychology 4:1–32.
Beckerman, S., P. I. Erickson, J. Yost, J. Regalado, L. Jaramillo,
C. Sparks, M. Iromenga, and K. Long. 2009. Life histories,
blood revenge, and reproductive success among the Wao-
rani of Ecuador. Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences of the USA 106(20):8134–8139.
Bowles, S., E. A. Smith, and M. Borgerhoff Mulder. 2010. The
emergence and persistence of inequality in premodern so-
cieties: introduction to the special section. Current An-
thropology 51(1):7–17.
Chagnon, N. A. 1979. Is reproductive success equal in egal-
itarian societies? In Evolutionary biology and human social
behavior. N. Chagnon and W. Irons, eds. Pp. 374–401.
North Scituate, MA: Duxbury.
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
———. 1988. Life histories, blood revenge, and warfare in a
tribal population. Science 239:985–992.
———. 1997. Yanomamo. 5th edition. New York: Holt, Rine-
hart & Winston.
Chapais, B. 2008. Primeval kinship: how pair-bonding gave
birth to human society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Cohen, M. 2009. Introduction: rethinking the origins of ag-
riculture. Current Anthropology 50(5):591–595.
Farmer, P. 2004. An anthropology of structural violence. Cur-
rent Anthropology 45(3):305–317.
Flinn, M. V. 2006. Evolution and ontogeny of stress response
to social challenge in the human child. Developmental Re-
view 26:138–174.
Flinn, M. V., and B. S. Low. 1986. Resource distribution, social
competition and mating patterns in human societies. In
Ecology and social evolution. D. I. Rubenstein and R. W.
Wrangham, eds. Pp. 217–243. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Flinn, M. V., R. J. Quinlan, C. V. Ward, and M. K. Coe. 2007.
Evolution of the human family: cooperative males, long
social childhoods, smart mothers, and extended kin net-
works. In Family relationships. C. Salmon and T. Shack-
elford, eds. Pp. 16–38. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fox, R. 1972. Alliance and constraint: sexual selection in the
evolution of human kinship systems. In Sexual selection
and the descent of man 1871–1971. B. Campbell, ed. Chi-
cago: Aldine.
Geary, D. C. 2005. The origin of mind: evolution of brain,
cognition, and general intelligence. Washington, DC: Amer-
ican Psychological Association.
Goody, J. 1976. Production and reproduction. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Hartung, J. 1982. Polygyny and inheritance of wealth. Current
Anthropology 23:1–12.
Mann, M. 1986. A history of power from the beginning to AD
1760, vol. 1 of The sources of social power. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press.
———. 1993. The rise of classes and nation states 1760–1914,
vol. 2 of The sources of social power. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Rodman, H. 1971. Lower-class families. London: Oxford Uni-
versity Press.
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
Comment: Intergenerational Wealth Transmission
and Inequality in Premodern Societies
History and the Problem of
Synchronic Models
N. Thomas Håkansson
Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University
of Agricultural Sciences, P.O. Box 7012, 750 07 Uppsala, Sweden
(natrix@mindspring.com). 21 X 09
The growth of detailed and long-term ethnographic studies
makes it possible today to pose more rigorous questions, to
test them with a broader range of comparative data, and to
thereby further anthropological theory. The authors are
pioneering in taking advantage of this rich accumulated
data, while they simultaneously and refreshingly return to an
older tradition of comparative anthropological scholarship,
grounded in a holistic analysis of a limited number of cases.
I cannot discuss all the findings and implications of their
studies, so I address here a few selected issues based on my
own expertise.
While these articles cover much analytical ground and
many complex interconnections, I detect two interwoven
themes of inquiry: first, the development of detailed and ho-
listic measurements of wealth transmission under different
regimes of production and, second, explanations of these dif-
ferences. With respect to the first, the authors have made a
significant contribution to our understanding of the devel-
opment of social and economic inequality through their dem-
onstration that wealth inequalities can be maintained across
generations even in the absence of institutional supports.
However, with respect to their explanation of the differences
they find, I believe that the authors unnecessarily constrain
their analysis by focusing on the impacts of local processes
to the exclusion of regional interaction and world systems.
It is especially in the arena of class stratification and political
complexity that Shenk et al. (2010) may want to rethink some
of their conclusions. In my view, two problems emerge in
their discussion of agricultural societies: (1) they analyze the
cases as units that are too self-contained and (2) they rely too
much on demographic-environmental relationships. These
flaws are, in turn, rooted in the lack of inclusion of a real
historical perspective. When the authors try to explain the
existence of significant intergenerational transmission of ma-
䉷 2010 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2010/5101-0014$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/649599
105
terial wealth, they include a cluster of causal relationships
between such factors as population density, defensible re-
sources, and scarcity of arable land. However, two assump-
tions concerning the relationships between intensive agricul-
ture and its antecedents and the rise of states guide their
research in what I consider to be a problematic direction.
Shenk et al.’s (2010:66) view that “development of intensive
agriculture is historically associated with the rise of complex
societies, including complex chiefdoms and states” is increas-
ingly being called into question by archaeological and eth-
nohistorical research. Recent research on the links between
the development of political and economic complexity and
the character of agriculture reveals that while states may be
associated with intensive agriculture, the reverse is not true.
Intensive cultivation is often present in the archaeological
record before the emergence of political centralization (Thurs-
ton and Fischer 2007). Although an argument can be made
that it was the development of intensive cultivation that con-
tributed to centralization in prehistory, this line of reasoning
is complicated by the long-term persistence of many histor-
ically and ethnographically known societies that have this type
of cultivation but lack any institutionalized class and cen-
tralized political structure (e.g., Erickson 2006; Håkansson
2007; Widgren and Sutton 2004). Hence, the rise of complex
societies is not a necessary condition for the maintenance of
intensive cultivation, nor do cross-sectional data from the
Ethnographic Atlas (Murdock 1967) support such a general-
ization. For example, for purposes of my own research on
non-Western agriculture, I recently counted all the cases of
intensive cultivation coded in the atlas (and its supplements)
and found that, excluding the European cases, at least 106
(45%) of the 233 societies coded for intensive agriculture
lacked significant political centralization (Murdock 1967).
Thus, the many historical and ethnographic cases of societies
where such investments have been created and maintained
without the emergence of formal stratification and political
centralization question any necessary relationship between
these variables.
 106
The second factor that Shenk et al. (2010) bring forward
as a driving force behind the existence of inequalities in landed
wealth, socioeconomic stratification, and high intergenera-
tional transmission of material wealth is scarcity of arable
land. In this, they follow Ester Boserup’s (1965) well-known
thesis. However, her model, too, has been increasingly ques-
tioned by archaeological and historical research that dem-
onstrates that intensive agriculture has emerged and persisted
without any presence of population pressure in many regions
of the world (e.g., Bayliss-Smith 1997; Erickson 2006; Håk-
ansson 2007; Hornborg 2005; Thurston and Fischer 2007).
This does not mean that localized political control over land
is not important but does suggest that it should be seen as
both part of and dependent on political economic processes
that emanate from regional and wider networks of, for ex-
ample, exchange, trade, control of rituals, and competition,
rather than as a result of circumscription and demography.
Indeed, local population concentrations emerge due to po-
litical and economic processes, such as the growth of market
centers, and can create their own effects. While defensible
resources and scarcity may very well have played a role in the
emergence and maintenance of persistent economic inequality
in the past, such conditions often occurred without general
land scarcity. One example of this is the investment in land-
esque capital in the form of durable landscape and soil mod-
ifications, for example, terracing and irrigation, which occur
frequently in the historical record (Widgren and Sutton 2004).
These, rather than overall scarcity of arable land, often pro-
vided highly productive resources that contributed to eco-
nomic if not political inequalities, all in the absence of pop-
ulation pressure (e.g., Håkansson 1998; Hornborg 2005;
Thurston and Fischer 2007). A similar argument can be made
for the later Iron Age in southern Sweden and Denmark,
where no land scarcity was present during a long period of
agricultural intensification and political centralization (Thurs-
ton 2007).
The authors construct four regimes of production as ideal
types of socioecological relationships that exist outside time
and space. While it is legitimate to build analytical models,
the authors assume as invariable too many of the models’
constitutive relationships. As I pointed out above, several of
these assumed invariable causal relationships; for example,
population pressure and cultivation system, are, in fact, var-
iable. I suggest that a crucial source of such variation is re-
gional and extraregional political economic processes. Thus,
by excluding roles played by external linkages and historical
changes in world systems connections, the authors’ expla-
nations of the relationships between production and inter-
generational transfers overemphasize locally derived causes.
For example, I think that a good argument could be made
for differences in wealth inequalities and the elasticity of
wealth transmission among East African pastoralists in the
nineteenth versus the late twentieth centuries. That is, many
differences in the character of pastoralist communities be-
tween these centuries are, to a great extent, a product of their
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
entanglements in the regional and international economic and
political interrelationships specific to the processes in the
world system taking place at the different time periods. Pas-
toralists and cultivators in East Africa in the mid-nineteenth
century maintained intensive relationships of exchange, raid-
ing, and transfers of people within and between regions. The
ivory trade offered additional opportunities to obtain cattle
from sources outside of the local production and exchange
system (Håkansson 2004). In the twentieth century, however,
pastoralists experienced drastic reductions in their territories,
a decline in direct interactions with cultivators, and the dis-
appearance of long-distance trade opportunities. Not only did
the caravan trade abate but also the livestock trade was se-
verely circumscribed by colonial and postcolonial restrictions.
Hence, in my mind, abstractions from twentieth-century data
cannot be used solely to construct models that are assumed
to account for the social and economic processes in com-
munities in earlier—even prehistoric—time periods as well.
While the authors are cognizant of the effect of wider world
systems on their cases, I suggest that they incorporate these
into their models. World systems linkages varied throughout
human history and thus created very different epochs of re-
lationships and local developments. Such a perspective does
not imply a retreat into historical particularism but rather the
need for construction of different kinds of models that take
into account the influences of factors external to production
systems alone.
References Cited
Bayliss-Smith, T. 1997. From taro garden to golf course? al-
ternative futures for agricultural capital in the Pacific Is-
lands. In Environment and development in the Pacific Islands.
B. Burt and C. Clerk, eds. Pp. 143–170. Canberra: Austra-
lian National University.
Boserup, E. 1965. The conditions of agricultural growth: the
economics of agrarian change under population pressure. New
York: Aldine.
Erickson, C. L. 2006. Intensification, political economy, and
the farming community. In Agricultural strategies. J. Marcus
and C. Stanish, eds. Pp. 334–363. Los Angeles: Cotzen In-
stitute of Archaeology, University of California.
Håkansson, N. T. 1998. Rulers and rainmakers in pre-colonial
South Pare, Tanzania: the role of exchange and ritual ex-
perts in political fragmentation. Ethnology 37:263–283.
———. 2004. The human ecology of world systems in East
Africa: the impact of the ivory trade. Human Ecology 32:
561–591.
———. 2007. The decentralized landscape: regional wealth
and the expansion of production in northern Tanzania be-
fore the eve of colonialism. In Economies and the transfor-
mation of landscape. L. Cligget and C. Pool, eds. Pp.
239–266. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira.
Hornborg, A. 2005. Ethnogenesis, regional integration, and
Håkansson Comment
ecology in prehistoric Amazonia. Current Anthropology 46:
589–620.
Murdock, G. P. 1967. Ethnographic atlas. Pittsburgh: Univer-
sity of Pittsburgh Press.
Shenk, M. K., M. Borgerhoff Mulder, J. Beise, G. Clark,
W. Irons, D. Leonetti, B. S. Low, et al. 2010. Intergen-
erational wealth transmission among agriculturalists:
foundations of agrarian inequality. Current Anthropology
51(1):65–83.
Thurston, T. L. 2007. Infields, outfields, and broken lands:
107
agricultural intensification and the ordering of space during
Danish state formation. In Seeking a richer harvest: the ar-
chaeology of subsistence intensification, innovation, and
change. T. L. Thurston and C. T. Fischer, eds. Pp. 155–191.
New York: Springer.
Thurston, T. L., and C. T. Fischer, eds. 2007. Seeking a richer
harvest: the archaeology of subsistence intensification, inno-
vation, and change. New York: Springer.
Widgren, M., and J. E. G. Sutton, eds. 2004. Islands of intensive
agriculture in eastern Africa. Oxford: James Currey.
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
Comment: Intergenerational Wealth Transmission
and Inequality in Premodern Societies
A Good Start
Robert L. Kelly
Department of Anthropology, University of Wyoming, Laramie,
Wyoming 82071, U.S.A. (rlkelly@uwyo.edu). 9 X 09
Let me first commend the authors for a remarkable piece of
cross-cultural research. This sort of collaborative effort in-
tended to take disparate data sets and convert them into a
single quantitative scale of analysis should be more common
in anthropology. Too often, anthropologists are rewarded for
being lone wolves—a cultural attribute of our discipline that
is probably related to the kind of personality that can un-
dertake the lonely work of participant observation. I hope
that the success of this collaboration will encourage others to
work jointly and the Santa Fe Institute and similar bodies to
support such efforts.
But I must also admit to some disappointment. The final
paper (Smith et al. 2010) lists as its achievement five linked
claims. From these, we learn that the “intergenerational trans-
mission of wealth” is most significant in pastoral and agri-
cultural systems, as opposed to horticultural and foraging
societies, and that of the three kinds of wealth—material,
relational, and embodied—material wealth is most likely to
be the basis of inequality. Also, we learn that the degree of
intergenerational transmission of wealth is correlated with the
degree of inequality of wealth. Truthfully, do these conclusions
strike anyone as remarkable or new?
The ultimate objective of these studies, of course, is to
understand the formation of social inequality, a subject of
long-standing interest in anthropology. The intergenerational
transfer of wealth plays a role in the formation of inequality,
and as its subject, this special section makes a contribution
toward understanding it. But is wealth transfer at the heart
of the formation of inequality or a factor that maintains it
once it is formed?
The formation of social inequality is fascinating precisely
because egalitarianism is so “fiercely” maintained in small-
scale, nomadic, foraging communities. Various kinds of lev-
eling mechanisms ensure that no one can lord it over another.
If living hunter-gatherers provide any sort of guide at all, or
if they at least provide a working hypothesis, then that fierce
egalitarianism probably characterized foragers in the late
䉷 2010 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2010/5101-0015$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/649535
109
Pleistocene and early Holocene. And if that were true—and
archaeological evidence suggests that it is—then it is myste-
rious how such a culture could be transformed into one in
which people not only readily accepted massive differences
in wealth but also expected and encouraged them. Why the
leveling mechanisms stopped working is the most intriguing
part of this process. But these papers do not go there.
The important point lies in the last paragraphs of the final
paper (Smith et al. 2010): the conditions that permit the
control of wealth, initially in the form of productive resource
locales, for the most part did not arise until intensive agri-
culture and pastoralism appeared on the scene, variably in
the early to middle Holocene. For me, the transfer of wealth
is part of the process whereby social inequality becomes cod-
ified, but it is not causal (or it is a proximate, not an ultimate,
cause).
Human behavioral ecology, the paradigm shared by vir-
tually all these authors, understands that every action or
choice has costs and benefits and that these are ultimately
related in some fashion to fitness (or, to use Winterhalder’s
term, “utility”). For the problem at hand, the question is not
only to what extent one can control wealth but also to what
extent one must control wealth to maximize fitness advantage.
What are the costs and benefits of controlling wealth?
Anthropologists often label foragers as “generous” people,
although their food sharing has a definite algebra to it, the
bottom line of which is their own long-term fitness (or
utility). Among foragers, the cost of controlling wealth is the
loss of social partners. Stingy people lose social ties; generous
people gain them. Nomadic peoples’ first line of defense
against “bad” times is movement—to places where they have
relatives, trading partners, or “countrymen” (in Australia).
Foragers create and keep these ties by dispersing material
wealth, including food, and obtain relational wealth in turn.
That relational wealth can be passed on to another generation,
but it is ultimately based on the generosity of the living people
and not on their ancestors (hence, relational wealth has low
rankings among foragers in this study).
Social inequality forms when one can control key resource
locales, such as prime agricultural land, rich pastures, or ex-
 110
traction points on salmon streams. There is a benefit to con-
trolling key places on the landscape, obviously, but why invest
energy walling others out if no one else wants in? As long as
there are “good” resource locales available, no one must de-
fend “theirs”; who would risk trying to displace a holder if
equivalent locales are available at no cost? Population density
is key: social hierarchies appear under high population den-
sities, and so it comes as no surprise that efforts to control
wealth, initially in the form of land, appear with intensive
agriculture or high population density on places with localized
but productive resource extraction points, such as salmon
streams (I do not accept the evidence offered by Hayden
[2001] for social inequality in the Upper, much less the Mid-
dle, Paleolithic). It is then that the cost is worth the benefit.
It is also no surprise that material wealth figures more
prominently in the process of transmitting wealth than does
embodied or relational wealth. There is no doubt that these
latter forms, especially relational, are important. But imagine
(as many novelists have) a man who inherits his father’s land
and gold, along with his political network. Now imagine that
this profligate son squanders his fortune, incurs gambling
debts, and allows his land to erode. He leads himself to ruin,
and his political affiliates see that this man is of no use to
them in their aspirations. And so they cut their ties. Political
networks depend on people using their wealth to their selfish
advantage and, in so doing, to the advantage of their political
affiliates. They must control material wealth—or risk falling
to the bottom of the social hierarchy.
The sample was broken into foragers, horticulturalists, pas-
toralists, and agriculturalists, but I think this was an unfor-
tunate choice. It is difficult to categorize any of the ethno-
graphic groups used. Some of the foragers, for example, could,
just as appropriately, have been called horticulturalists (who-
do-some-foraging) rather than foragers (who-do-some-
horticulture). Most of those in the sample make a substantial
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
part of their living through government handouts, wage labor,
trade, and so on. But I do not want to return to the debate
of the 1980s over whether modern foragers are too “tainted”
by the modern world to serve as representatives of the past.
These authors are appropriately using them analytically, not
analogically.
But given that there is some overlap between the categories,
how useful are those categories (especially with such small
sample sizes) in tracking the causal variables? Human behav-
ioral ecology has advanced enough ideas about what controls
inequality to classify societies, or scale them, in terms that
would permit a test of some hypothesis of the role of the
intergenerational transfer of wealth in the formation of social
inequality. For example, if we think that the availability of
“controllable” resource locales is crucial, then could we ignore
whether they are foragers, pastoralists, and so on and scale
the groups in terms of the “controllability” of their key sub-
sistence (or other) resources rather than rely on our tradi-
tional categories as rough proxies? Given what I see in these
papers, I have every confidence that we are clever enough to
devise adequate cross-cultural measures. And I look forward
to the next effort with enthusiasm.
References Cited
Hayden, Brian. 2001. Richman, poorman, beggarman, chief:
the dynamics of social inequality. In Archaeology at the
millennium. G. Feinman and T. Price, eds. Pp. 231–272.
New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.
Smith, Eric Alden, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Samuel
Bowles, Michael Gurven, Tom Hertz, and Mary K. Shenk.
2010. Production systems, inheritance, and inequality in
premodern societies: conclusions. Current Anthropology
51(1):85–94.
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
Comment: Intergenerational Wealth Transmission
and Inequality in Premodern Societies
Inheritance and Inequality of Wealth
A Comment
Frederic L. Pryor
Department of Economics, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore,
Pennsylvania 19081, U.S.A. (fpryor1@swarthmore.edu). 23 IX 09
The essays under review provide a model analysis of a sadly
neglected topic, the distribution of wealth and inheritance in
nonstate societies. They define three different types of wealth,
measure the inequalities of holdings and inheritance arrange-
ments within four groups of societies with the same economic
systems, and then analyze similarities and differences between
the four groups. This research procedure allows us to gain a
broad perspective on the topic. The statistical methods em-
ployed are sophisticated, and the exposition of the results is
clear. Nevertheless, I am uncomfortable with the interpreta-
tion of the statistical results, and the comments below present
a different perspective on these calculations.
The Relationship between Gini
Coefficients of Wealth and
Inheritance b’s
The b coefficient represents the percentage change of an off-
spring’s wealth associated with a 1% change in the wealth of
his or her parents. As noted in the introductory essay by
Bowles, Smith, and Borgerhoff Mulder (2010), (1 ⫺ b) rep-
resents a regression toward the mean; that is, in the very long
run, with other things remaining equal, wealth will be equally
distributed if b is less than unity, which is the case for every
society in the sample. The lower the b is, the faster this equal-
ity will be achieved. Other things equal, we have reason to
suspect, therefore, that lower b’s will be associated with lower
Gini coefficients of wealth, a conjecture that can be easily
tested with the data for the 44 societies.
Unfortunately, the results of a regression analysis do not
support this conjecture. More specifically, if we examine the
relationship between the Gini coefficients (dependent vari-
able) and b’s (independent variable) with an ordinary least
䉷 2010 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2010/5101-0016$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/649564
111
squares regression, we find a negative but statistically insig-
nificant relationship (.05 level) for the foraging (hunting and
gathering) and horticultural societies, a positive but statisti-
cally insignificant relationship for the pastoral societies, and
a positive and statistically significant relationship only for the
agricultural societies. These results are not changed if we add
the relative importance of the different types of food pro-
duction activities (the a’s) or a dummy variable indicating
whether the calculated b is statistically significant. If we ar-
range the data according to the type of wealth (embodied,
material, or relational) and rerun the regressions, we find a
negative but statistically insignificant relationship between the
Gini coefficients and the b’s for embodied and relational
wealth and a positive but statistically insignificant relationship
for material wealth. Adding to the regression, the a’s or a
dummy variable indicating whether the calculated b is sta-
tistically significant also does not change the statistical insig-
nificance of the results. So what is happening?
Explanations of the Disappointing
Regression Results
Two easy explanations for the disappointing regression results
can be offered. (1) Several of the papers mentioned differential
shocks to individual wealth holdings—cattle are stolen or die
from disease, climate changes nullify certain types of embod-
ied wealth, or people die so that relational wealth evaporates.
But, as conceded in the papers, no empirical evidence is avail-
able to determine whether such shocks actually had any im-
pact on the Gini coefficients of wealth holdings. (2) The b
coefficients are not a good measure of inheritance practices
and, moreover, cannot be accurately calculated: slightly more
than half are not statistically significant at the .05 level. If
wealth is not equally inherited by a person’s children or if
parents with the same wealth have a different number of
children, then the ratios of a child’s wealth to that of his or
 112
her parents can be greatly different for parents with the same
wealth, and an average ratio or a ratio calculated through a
regression technique may not tell us very much if we consider
only a few families. More specifically, in a society where each
set of parents has only two children and each child inherits
an equal share of the family’s wealth, the b may equal 1, while
in the same family situation with primogeniture, the average
b may equal 0.5 because one child inherits nothing. With
different numbers of children per family, there may be a wide
variation in the ratios of wealth of children to that of parents,
and the meaningfulness of the b is open to doubt, especially
in small samples. In the regression experiments described
above, I included a dummy variable to see whether the lack
of statistical significance of the b had any effect on the major
results, but it did not. Such a test, however, does not ade-
quately measure the bias of the wide variations of the ratios
of children’s wealth to parent’s wealth for parents in a given
wealth class. The inheritance rule, not the calculated b, is the
key variable to examine.
Inheritance and Wealth Inequality:
Alternative Explanations
What are the major mechanisms linking the inequalities of
wealth and the calculated b’s? Three seem to be particularly
important and, in the various papers, are informally discussed
but not seriously analyzed.
1. One crucial mechanism is demographic. In this regard,
consider the following situation: a society starts with an initial
distribution of wealth among individuals, the adults marry
according to certain rules (e.g., the degree of assortative mar-
riage according to wealth), people earn income by labor and
the use of their wealth according to certain rules (e.g., labor
income varies according to some rule, the income received
from wealth varies according to another rule, or there is a
certain sharing or redistribution of income in the society),
people save according to some rule, they have children ac-
cording to their income (if they are wealthy, they have more—
or fewer—children), they die and their wealth is redistributed
according to certain rules (e.g., primogeniture, equal division,
or some children receive more than others), and then the
process then begins anew as the children marry. Although
this process cannot be easily modeled analytically, it can be
easily simulated by computer and run for many generations.
The simulation results show that the distribution of wealth
asymptotically approaches an equilibrium that depends on
the various societal rules specified in the model, which also
influence the speed at which this equilibrium is achieved (sim-
ulations discussed in Pryor 1973). In such a situation, the
long-term inequality of wealth may have little relationship to
the inequality of wealth in the first few periods of the process.
Unfortunately, the papers in the special section focus only
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
on the short term because the available data deal primarily
with only two adjacent generations and they did not discuss
changes in inheritance arrangements or wealth inequalities in
the past. The b coefficient in the model is indirectly specified
by the inheritance rule and its interaction with the other rules.
Such a model provides a direct mechanism linking inheritance
rules and wealth inequality, which the various papers in the
special section discuss only in an informal manner.
2. The wealth distribution is also influenced by nonde-
mographic societal rules and institutions. In those societies
with slavery, wealth may be quite unequally distributed be-
cause a certain segment of the society is not allowed to have
any (material) wealth. Inequalities may arise because of lim-
ited access to certain resources necessary for food production,
for example, fertile land for agriculture or foraging rights for
particular tracts of land, river bank rights for fishing, water
rights and pastures for cattle herding, and so forth. Several
of the papers discussed these influential societal rules in
passing.
3. Finally, societies differ in the degree to which food and
tools for food production are shared between family members,
friends, or others, and this also has an important impact on
the distribution of wealth. Clearly, a family in a society with
extensive sharing is less likely to experience a downward spiral
of income and wealth if misfortune strikes, and this suggests
that societies with more sharing should have more egalitarian
wealth distributions. This conjecture can be tested in several
ways.
Some cross-cultural data from a large sample show that
both reciprocal exchange and gift giving (one-way transfers),
which represent a type of relational wealth, are more likely
to be found in foraging and horticultural societies than in
pastoral and agricultural societies at higher levels of economic
development (Pryor 1977, chaps. 7, 9). We would predict,
therefore, that the differences in the Gini coefficients of dif-
ferent types of wealth would be lower (more equal wealth
distribution) in the former than in the latter societies. Looking
at the Gini coefficients for the various types of capital for
foraging and horticultural societies in comparison with those
for pastoral and agricultural societies, I find that such a hy-
pothesis is confirmed to a statistically significant degree. Con-
fining ourselves to the individual types of capital, we see that
the hypothesis is significantly confirmed for relational wealth
but not for embodied or material wealth.
Final Words
Despite my reservations, I believe that the comparative ap-
proach employed in these papers represents an important step
forward. Moreover, their focus on inheritance represents re-
search on a topic that has, up to now, been shamefully ne-
glected in the literature on economic anthropology. I can only
Pryor Comment
hope that the leads provided in these papers serve to en-
courage others to follow in their footsteps.
References Cited
Bowles, Samuel, Eric Alden Smith, and Monique Borgerhoff
Mulder. 2010. The emergence and persistence of inequality
113
in premodern societies: introduction to the special section.
Current Anthropology 51(1):7–17.
Pryor, Frederic L. 1973. Simulation of the impact of social
and economic institutions on the size distribution of in-
come and wealth. American Economic Review 63(1):50–72.
———. 1977. The origins of the economy. New York: Academic
Press.
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
Comment: Intergenerational Wealth Transmission
and Inequality in Premodern Societies
Comparative Anthropology and
Human Inequality
Stephen Shennan
Institute of Archaeology, University College London, 31–34
Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PY, United Kingdom
(s.shennan@ucl.ac.uk). 12 X 09
This is an outstanding set of papers that reasserts the im-
portance of one of anthropology’s long-standing goals—the
comparative evolutionary study of societies. The issue that it
addresses, the factors affecting the emergence of economic
inequality, could not be more significant. Making compari-
sons involves collecting comparable data from different so-
cieties, and the systematic collection of consistent comparative
quantitative information that provides the basis for these pa-
pers represents a major achievement of lasting value. Asking
new questions almost always involves the collection of inform
ation that earlier scholars had not deemed important, but it
is still difficult not to be disappointed that after 100 years of
anthropological fieldwork, the number of cases from which
the authors have been able to extract the data they need is
very limited.
A particular conceptual advance the authors make, central
to their comparative approach, is their characterization of
what might at first seem very disparate phenomena—acqui-
sition of skills, numbers of exchange partners, and sizes of
cattle herds, for example—as different forms of wealth (em-
bodied, relational, and material), making use of the ideas of
human capital and parental investment from economics and
behavioral ecology. They also cleverly get around the issue of
the multiple institutions and practices through which inter-
generational resource transfers are affected by measuring out-
comes, the degree to which parent and child values are cor-
related. This theoretically justified creative abstraction in
defining appropriate variables is matched by the extremely
powerful and sophisticated analytical methods used to obtain
the many interesting results that provide the basis for the
papers’ conclusions. Not least of these results is their dem-
onstration of the inherited inequalities that exist in apparently
egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies and that have a major
impact on individuals’ life chances through the generations.
䉷 2010 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2010/5101-0017$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/649566
115
Indeed, one conclusion that could be drawn from these results
is that the claimed egalitarianism of many if not most hunter-
gatherer societies is less a result of an evolved human psy-
chology of “reverse dominance” (Boehm 1993) and more one
of ecological conditions relating to the nature of resources.
The idea that the key to the development of major in-
equalities in human societies might be the nature of what
counts as wealth and the extent to which it is transmitted—
and, specifically, the emergence of material wealth and its
inheritance—is not new in itself. It is there in the property
rights discussions of the “new institutional economics” and
in Bowles’s (2004, chap. 11) earlier work, as well as in the
discussions of Rogers (1995) and in Hayden’s (1997; Hayden,
Bakewell, and Gargett 1996; see also Shennan 2002, chap. 8)
studies, as the authors note. Moreover, the foundation of the
explanation advanced here for the importance of material
resources, especially land but also animals—that when they
are in short supply, their predictability and excludability give
lasting, reliable benefits that justify paying the costs of in-
vesting in improvements and of defending them and exclud-
ing others—goes back some time, not least to the early work
of author Eric Smith (Dyson-Hudson and Smith 1978). What
is new is the systematic demonstration of the high rates of
transmission of material wealth and the higher levels of in-
equality associated with it compared with other wealth forms.
It follows from this quite naturally, as the authors indicate,
that the key to the growth of inequality in the Holocene is
the greatly increased potential offered by certain forms of
agriculture for more or less unlimited inequality arising from
the inheritance of material resources, because of the great
potential that they create for the rich to get richer over the
generations, in comparison with the more limited and less
reliable possibilities offered by embodied and relational
wealth. On this basis, their attack on the often-made claim
that the key to the inequality generated by agriculture is the
possibility of surplus generation is entirely convincing; rather,
surplus generation is a by-product of the differential accu-
 116
mulation of scarce and predictable productive material re-
sources—capital, in other words—through inheritance.
However, a key topic that the authors do not fully address
is that of reproductive success (RS). They note that some
authors (e.g., Nettle and Pollet 2008) regard higher RS as the
ultimate goal to which the transmission of the various kinds
of wealth serves as the proximate means, but they deliberately
avoid pursuing this line of argument and analysis, taking RS
as merely one form of embodied wealth. This is somewhat
surprising because in their earlier research, several of the pa-
pers’ authors have played a major role in demonstrating the
importance of the difference that wealth makes to RS in their
respective case studies. Moreover, it is questionable whether
the measure of RS that they use in these papers is really
adequate. Shenk et al. (2010) rightly comment that the im-
portance of material wealth in such societies can actually lead
to a weakening of the link between parental and child repro-
ductive success because they often have restrictive rules on
inheritance, such as primogeniture; however, this does not
necessarily mean that such rules are inimical to RS measured
over the longer term (e.g., in terms of numbers of grand-
children), merely that the measure used in the study is not a
very satisfactory one. In fact, there are strong grounds to
believe that the increased economic inequality was associated
with a corresponding increase in reproductive inequalities,
especially between men (e.g., Betzig 1986).
In other words, the shift from the importance of embodied
and relational wealth in hunter-gatherer societies (and hor-
ticulturalists) to material wealth in pastoralists and agricul-
turalists makes sense only as representing a change in the
nature of the resources that are critical for RS and, therefore,
a change in the nature of successful reproductive strategies
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
associated largely, though not exclusively, with the conditions
created by the appearance of certain types of farming.
References Cited
Betzig, L. L. 1986. Despotism and differential reproduction: a
Darwinian view of history. New York: Aldine.
Boehm, C. 1993. Egalitarian behavior and reverse dominance
hierarchy. Current Anthropology 34:227–254.
Bowles, S. 2004. Microeconomics: behavior, institutions and
evolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Dyson-Hudson, R., and E. A. Smith. 1978. Human territo-
riality: an ecological reassessment. American Anthropologist
80:21–41.
Hayden, B. 1997. Observations on the prehistoric social and
economic structure of the North American plateau. World
Archaeology 29:242–261.
Hayden, B., E. Bakewell, and R. Gargett. 1996. The world’s
longest-lived corporate group: lithic analysis reveals pre-
historic social organization near Lillooet, British Columbia.
American Antiquity 61:341–356.
Nettle, D., and T. Pollet. 2008. Natural selection on male
wealth in humans. American Naturalist 172:658–666.
Rogers, A. R. 1995. For love or money: the evolution of re-
productive and material motivations. In Human reproductive
decisions. R. Dunbar, ed. Pp. 76–95. London: St. Martin’s.
Shenk, M. K., M. Borgerhoff Mulder, J. Beise, G. Clark, W.
Irons, D. Leonetti, B. S. Low, et al. 2010. Intergenerational
wealth transmission among agriculturalists: foundations of
agrarian inequality. Current Anthropology 51(1):65–83.
Shennan, S. J. 2002. Genes, memes and human history: Dar-
winian archaeology and cultural evolution. London: Thames
& Hudson.
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
Comment: Intergenerational Wealth Transmission
and Inequality in Premodern Societies
The Emergence and Persistence of
Inequality in Premodern Societies
A Historical Perspective
Richard Waller
Department of History, Bucknell University, Lewisburg,
Pennsylvania 17837, U.S.A. (rwaller@bucknell.edu). 16 X 09
That marked inequalities of power, wealth, and influence have
always existed in premodern societies is well known. The pre-
sent set of papers attempts to quantify this inequality, to explore
its origins and, importantly, to consider whether it may persist
from one generation to the next. The following comments focus
on pastoral inequality in East Africa and offer some suggestions
for future analysis.
It is not difficult to demonstrate pastoral inequality in the
past, either anecdotally or by inference (Waller 1999); it is far
more difficult to prove its persistence in ways that are both
quantified and comparable across societies. To do so effectively
would require the sort of longitudinal data not available, except
from the very recent past. Kambuya’s Cattle, the classic and
almost unique study of the disposal of one herd in the 1960s,
has no antecedents: we do not know how Kambuya inherited
his cattle or how his sons disposed of their herds in turn (Gold-
schmidt 1969). There are no precise data on levels of and
changes in stock ownership in East Africa before 1900 and very
little between then and the 1960s at the earliest. Colonial of-
ficials did, of course, count African livestock, generally in con-
nection with grazing control and immunization schemes, but
the material that survives is scattered and rarely identifies
households (Anderson 2002).1 At best, we have snapshots of
herd ownership at different points in time and place that, while
showing inequality, cannot be used to construct the sort of
mathematical models used here. To extend the argument about
persistence back into the past will thus require careful inference
and also a clarification of what is meant by “premodern” be-
cause many pastoral societies have long been engaged with the
1. Some of the raw data, from grazing schemes, for example, may well
have included household information, but this now seems to be lost.
䉷 2010 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2010/5101-0018$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/649567
117
modern world in ways that may affect the factors considered
here.
Material wealth, in animals and in access to grazing and
water, is relatively easy to transmit and quantify and less so to
track over time. It is, however, worth noting that animals, like
land, were often not units of property but bundles of different
rights of use, transfer, and disposal with different trajectories
of “ownership.”2 Relational wealth presents greater problems
of interpretation and quantification, but it may be more trans-
missible than it appears. Social relationships include affines and
clan/lineage members, age-mates, stock associates (as in the
Kipsikis data set), and exchange partners or “bond friends.”
The last two, especially, were of considerable importance in
pastoral strategies of accumulation and survival (Sobania 1991;
Waller 1985).
One cannot choose one’s agnates or age-mates, but the
choice and range of affines through marriage is more open.
Even in pastoral societies where formal bridewealth is low, dif-
ferential rates of polygamy are associated with wealth as well
as with age (Spencer 1998).3 Moreover, families with good rep-
utations, such as members of “worthy clans” in Samburu, may
find it easier to both marry and marry off daughters advan-
tageously. Like stock wealth, reputation is partly heritable
(Spencer 1965, 2003). While success in the accumulation of
bond friends is obviously a matter of individual skill and op-
portunity—in Dassanetch, the range of an elder’s bond rela-
tionships is celebrated as a personal achievement (Almagor
1978)—it can be a consequence of, as well as a means to, wealth,
and, insofar as sons are involved in and inherit some of their
fathers’ interethnic networks, relationships could be transfer-
able. Kikuyu traders sent sons to live with and work for Maasai
2. For illuminating discussions of stock rights, see Hutchinson (1992).
3. For cases where steeply rising rates of bridewealth during the co-
lonial period threatened to prevent poorer men from marrying, see Ker-
shaw (1997) and Shadle (2006).
 118
partners in order to acquire language and cultural skills, and,
during the rinderpest pandemic of the 1890s, Maasai with con-
tacts outside the community used them to find refuge (Waller
1985, 1988). More recently, political influence and business
contacts can also be passed on in a similar way.
Knowledge is associated here with embodied wealth as a
personal attribute, but some forms of knowledge (including
those required to maintain socioeconomic networks) may again
be partly transmissible; knowledge is not necessarily “open.”4
Privileged knowledge (of the past; kirita) in Kikuyu was for-
merly restricted to men who were of a social and material
standing to reach the higher grades of elderhood (Kershaw
1997). Some knowledge of divining in Maasai can be acquired
by laymen, though too close attention to such matters might
lead to suspicions of sorcery, but the power to prophesy is
restricted to the members of certain families of diviners, most
notable Loonkidongi. Prophetic knowledge is inherited, not
acquired (Spencer 2003). Moreover, the extent to which sons
can practice their skills and acquire clients and thus wealth is
determined partly by the father’s unrestricted and unpredictable
choice of successor. In the case of established sectional prophets
with large domains, the choice offers the prospect of consid-
erable future wealth and influence. Sons who are not chosen
may become local practitioners, but the concentration of pro-
phetic power is maintained (Spencer 2003; Waller 1995). More
recently, Western education has become another unequally ac-
cessed source of knowledge within pastoral societies with pow-
erful implications. Consideration of both knowledge and re-
lations suggests that the three categories of wealth used here
should not be viewed separately; each involves the others.
While Maasai proverbs point to the fact that anyone, with
skill, determination, and luck, can build a herd, the equality of
opportunity suggested by such moral pronouncements may be
less clear on the ground.5 While all Maasai herd owners must
be reasonably competent to survive, some are more skilled and
knowledgeable than others. Fathers do not pass on herding
knowledge equally, and it is likely that prudent and skilful
husbandmen look for similar qualities among their sons, es-
pecially where managing the household herd is a family en-
terprise and its continuity through time is important.
One of the most interesting questions raised in the papers
is whether pastoral households take steps, insofar as inheritance
rules allow, to control the generational transfer of resources
and thus to prevent the dispersal of wealth. This would be
especially important for wealthier households with larger con-
centrations of stock, higher levels of polygamy, and more po-
tential heirs. The persistence of inequality here would depend
on at least two factors: the difference in size of wives’ herds,
over which husbands can exert control and from which their
sons can expect to inherit, and the degree of discretion a father
4. For a discussion of knowledge as power in the African past, see
Guyer and Eno Belinga (1995).
5. That stock wealth can be wasted by lazy, inept, or irresponsible
heirs is also a matter of concern.
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
has in the disposition of assets. Maasai herd owners do have
absolute control during their lifetimes and can determine which
of their sons will benefit, both from outright inheritance and
from the transfer of knowledge, social and technical. The ac-
cepted fact that some are favored and others are not is reflected
in the contrasting words ol kirotet and ol tinki. Notions of
favoritism and inequality within the family are part of a wider
ambiguity in the power of fathers and elders over their de-
pendents and juniors (Spencer 2003). Herd owners may take
steps to ensure that the bulk of their assets, material and oth-
erwise, pass into safe hands so that the continuity of the family
enterprise is assured.
Much of the foregoing has addressed aspects that are not
quantifiable. African historians tend to be sceptical of numbers,
in view of what they have to work with. However, the modeling
here is deeply interesting and addresses a vital issue. The chal-
lenge now is perhaps to find ways of going back to the in-
numerate past.
References Cited
Almagor, U. 1978. Pastoral partners. Manchester: Manchester
University Press.
Anderson, D. 2002. Eroding the commons. Oxford: Currey.
Goldschmidt, W. 1969. Kambuya’s cattle. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Guyer, J., and S. Eno Belinga. 1995. Wealth in people as wealth
in knowledge: accumulation and composition in equatorial
Africa. Journal of African History 36:91–120.
Hutchinson, S. 1992. The cattle of money and the cattle of girls
among the Nuer, 1930–1983. American Ethnologist 19:
294–316.
Kershaw, G. 1997. Mau Mau from below. Oxford: Currey.
Shadle, B. 2006. Girl cases. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Sobania, N. 1991. Feasts, famines and friends: nineteenth cen-
tury exchange and ethnicity in the eastern Lake Turkana
region. In Herders, warriors and traders. J. Galaty and P.
Bonte, eds. Pp. 118–142. Boulder, CA: Westview.
Spencer, P. 1965. The Samburu. London: Routledge.
———. 1998. The pastoral continuum. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press.
———. 2003. Time, space and the unknown. London:
Routledge.
Waller, R. 1985. Economic and social relations in the Central
Rift Valley: the Maa-speakers and their neighbours in the
nineteenth century. In Kenya in the nineteenth century. B. A.
Ogot, ed. Pp. 83–151. Nairobi: Bookwise.
———. 1988. Emutai: crisis and response in Maasailand,
1883–1902. In The ecology of survival. D. Johnson and D.
Anderson, eds. Pp. 73–113. Boulder, CO: Westview.
———. 1995. Kidongoi’s kin. In Revealing prophets. D. An-
derson and D. Johnson, eds. Pp. 28–64. Oxford: Currey.
———. 1999. Pastoral poverty in historical perspective. In The
poor are not us. D. Anderson and V. Broche-Due, eds. Pp.
20–49. Oxford: Currey.
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
Intergenerational Wealth Transmission and
Inequality in Premodern Societies
Reply
CA⫹ Online-Only Supplement: Estimating the Inheritance of Wealth in Premodern Societies
Eric Alden Smith, Samuel Bowles, Tom Hertz,
Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Mary K. Shenk,
and Michael Gurven
The papers in this special section provide empirical support
for a model of the role of intergenerational wealth transmis-
sion in explaining variation in wealth inequality across pre-
modern societies. Our results lead us to conclude that vari-
ation in intergenerational transmission rates explain a
substantial portion of such inequality, as expected from our
model, but do so in conjunction with other factors, particularly
the types of wealth involved, the nature of the production
system, and the social institutions associated with those sys-
tems. The commentators variously applaud our efforts, query
the importance of intergenerational transmission relative to
other factors, and raise questions about our analytical meth-
ods and the representativeness of our sample of societies. Here
we address the most important challenges raised in the com-
ments and highlight much-needed future lines of research.
We sought to understand some of the determinants of
wealth inequality by means of a dynamic model (presented
more fully in Borgerhoff Mulder et al. 2009) in which the
long-run equilibrium level of inequality depends on just two
things. The first is the extent of new inequalities that occur
in each generation (windfall gains and losses that in our model
are uncorrelated with wealth), measured by jl2, the variance
of the shocks. The second is the extent to which these shocks
are passed on from generation to generation, as measured by
the inverse of 1 ⫺ b 2, which becomes a very large number as
b approaches 1. From this model we deduce that long-run
inequality is simply the ratio of these two quantities, or
jl2/(1 ⫺ b 2). The model is a deliberate simplification designed
to capture two important influences on wealth inequality in
the very long run in a way that is comparable across many
different kinds of economic systems and processes of pro-
duction. Simplicity and comparability are its virtues: it makes
no pretense of capturing all of the influences on this process.
The Role of Shocks
This brings us to an interesting suggestion by Gregory Clark,
but first we need to correct a possible misunderstanding. Clark
䉷 2010 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2010/5101-0019$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/650152
This content downloaded from 128.252.067.066 on July 25, 2016 19:46:18 PM
All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
119
writes that we seek to “measure and explain the degree of
social inequality in societies simply by measuring” b (p. 101).
In fact, we measure inequality using the Gini coefficient, a
statistic that bears no necessary relationship to b; one can
imagine a highly unequal society in which positions in the
wealth distribution are randomly drawn each generation
(b p 0) or an extremely egalitarian society in which parental
wealth is a near-perfect predictor of child wealth. In our data
set, for example, inequalities in body weight are very modest,
but weight is strongly transmitted across generations. Clark
is correct, however, that in explaining the Gini, we do not
consider the possibility that the extent of shocks (jl2) may
vary across economic systems. We were unable to explore this
possibility in our study as there are no currently feasible mea-
sures of the extent of shocks.
But, like Clark, we cannot resist speculating about the na-
ture and extent of these shocks. In addition to the reasons
Clark offers for believing that the wealth of farmers and herd-
ers may be subject to greater shocks than the wealth of for-
agers, we would add portfolio diversification: foragers subsist
on literally hundreds of species of plants and animals, while
agricultural and pastoral subsistence often depends on rela-
tively few. We may test whether jl2 differs between hunter-
gatherer and horticultural economies, on the one hand, and
agricultural and pastoral economies, on the other, by taking
the logarithm of jl2/(1 ⫺ b 2) to turn this ratio into a sum,
which may then be estimated using ordinary least squares
regression, as follows:
Gini p a ⫹ bH ⫹ c ln [1/(1 ⫺ b 2)] ⫹ ␧, (1)
where H is a dummy variable taking the value of 1 for wealth
measures from hunter-gatherer or horticultural economies.
The estimate of a is a measure of the extent of shocks in the
agricultural and pastoral economies and a ⫹ b is the corre-
sponding measure for hunter-gatherer and horticultural econ-
omies. The parameter c estimates the effect of variations in
the extent of intergenerational wealth transmission on the
 120
degree of inequality. Here is the estimated equation with t-
statistics in parentheses (all highly significant):
Gini p 0.39 ⫺ 0.14H ⫹ 0.14 ln [1/(1 ⫺ b 2)]
(9.09) (⫺2.73) (2.22) (2)
(R 2 p 0.32, n p 43). The estimates imply that shocks in ag-
ricultural and pastoral societies are 56% larger (0.39/0.25–1)
than in hunter-gatherer and horticultural populations, con-
sistent with Clark’s conjecture.
Transmission Rates versus Mechanisms
Turning from the explanation of the level of inequality to the
estimation of the degree of inheritance, we distinguish be-
tween the extent of transmission (b, a statistical relationship)
and the process of inheritance. The latter, as James Boone
points out, is highly heterogeneous, including such disparate
processes as material bequests, socialization by parents, and
genetic transmission. Boone considers this heterogeneity a
problem, while Stephen Shennan considers our statistical con-
cept a clever and “creative abstraction.” Richard Waller elab-
orates on the specifics of how material, relational, and knowl-
edge-based embodied wealth are transmitted, and we find it
encouraging that our study, which undoubtedly pushes the
quantification of ethnographic data to its limits, corresponds
so closely to a historian’s interpretation of the ethnographic
materials.
To clarify the difference between our measure of overall
transmission and the causal processes of inheritance contrib-
uting to it, suppose that in a herding economy the wealth of
the father (W ′) is correlated with the wealth of the son (W)
both by direct bequest and by virtue of the fact that the father’s
wealth allows him to provide better nutrition and, hence,
more somatic capital (S), to his son (fig. 1).
Thus we have
S p a ⫹ bW ′, (3)
′
W p A ⫹ BW ⫹ CS, (4)
where a and A are constants, b is the effect of variations in
W ′ on S, and B and C, respectively, are the effects of variations
in W ′ and S, respectively, on W. Substituting the expression
for S into equation (4), we have
W p A ⫹ BW ′ ⫹ C(a ⫹ bW ′ ) p A ⫹ Ca ⫹ (B ⫹ Cb)W ′. (5)
The expression (B ⫹ Cb) gives the total effect of parental
wealth on offspring wealth, of which B is the direct and Cb
the indirect effect.
If by “inheritance” Boone means the literal passing on of
things (by bequest, e.g.), then he is surely correct to say that
“inheritance is . . . unfeasible unless wealth can be . . . se-
questered” (p. 98). But in the above example, a mechanism
This content downloaded from 128.252.067.066 on July 25, 2016 19:46:18 PM
All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
Figure 1. Example of direct and indirect transmission.
other than actual bequest is involved, namely, nutrition, which
creates somatic capital (embodied wealth). The indirect effect
need not be positive, of course, as is the case (e.g., in our
data on the Kipsigis) when greater parental wealth is asso-
ciated with a larger number of offspring. To see this, just
redefine S, above, as number of sons, and note that in this
case, C would be negative because the more sons a father
with a given amount of wealth has, the less will be the wealth
transferred to the son.
Interdependence of Different Wealth Types
We adopt a broad definition of wealth, adding embodied and
relational forms to the more conventional focus on material
capital. Several commentators point out that different wealth
classes are not independent of each other. Thus, Kenneth
Ames reminds us of Walker and Hewlett’s (1990) hypothesis
that those with large kin networks have better dental health,
probably as a result of access to a greater range of foods (an
interaction of relational and embodied wealth), Dan Bradburd
describes how Komachi (and many others) use wealth to build
social connections, and vice versa, and Mark Flinn observes
how hard it may be to tease apart power and resources.
We agree that our classes of wealth are interdependent, but
that does not mean they cannot be measured and the effects
of their variation studied. There are two very different kinds
of interdependence to be considered. First, the contribution
of one kind of wealth to an individual’s well-being may de-
pend on the level of some other kind of wealth; and second,
how much wealth of one type an individual has may be the
result of having other kinds of wealth.
With respect to the first, our model does not assume in-
dependence of wealth types but, rather, a relationship of com-
plementarity, such that the marginal effect of a larger herd,
for example, increases with the number of political supporters.
Thus, the effect on well-being of any one kind of wealth a
family has depends on their holdings in other kinds of wealth.
This complementarity may help determine the degree of
transmission, but we see this as a strength of our approach
rather than a flaw.
To explicate this more fully, consider our definition of a
Smith et al. Intergenerational Wealth Transmission and Inequality in Premodern Societies: Reply
household’s wealth: any attribute that contributes to its well-
being as measured by consumption levels, social status, or
other ends that are valued in the particular society. To take
account of many kinds of wealth simultaneously, we define
the importance of each class of wealth as follows. Let E, M,
and R be positive numbers representing the amount of a
household’s embodied, material, and relational wealth. The
well-being of the household, W, is a weighted product of these
classes of wealth, the weights being the relative importance
of each wealth class in the production system in which the
household lives:
W p gE eM mR r, (6)
where g is a positive constant and the exponents e, m, and r
(the weights) are the derivatives of the logarithm of well-
being with respect to the logarithms of the three respective
wealth classes or, equivalently, the percent difference in well-
being associated with a percent difference in the amount of
each class of wealth.
The weighted product is preferred (to the weighted sum,
e.g.) because it implies, plausibly, that the wealth classes are
complements; that is, the contribution of each class of wealth
to individual well-being is enhanced by the extent of the other
classes of wealth. This is the first sense in which wealth classes
are interdependent. We do not know, of course, if we have
correctly captured the nature and extent of the interdepen-
dencies as we have not yet estimated an equation like (6)
explicitly. This is among our current research projects.
The second kind of interdependence concerns the process
by which an individual acquires wealth; for example, a well-
connected person may find it easier to acquire a large herd.
Thus, in the above example the material wealth of the father
contributes to the embodied wealth of the son, which in turn
contributes to the material wealth of the son. This is true in
many cases, and it may help explain the degree of transmis-
sion. But it is not a criticism of our methods as long as our
estimate of b is an unbiased estimate of the effect of a parental
wealth shock on the wealth of the offspring. If figure 1 cor-
rectly captures the causal relationships involved, then an un-
biased estimate of b is achieved by regressing son’s wealth
against father’s wealth, as we do. In this case, were we to
include a separate control for the son’s somatic capital (S),
this would introduce a negative bias into our estimate of b,
one that netted out the indirect consequences of the father’s
wealth.
But suppose that S represented the son’s herding skills ac-
quired from the dad and consider the effect of the loss of the
father’s herd through theft. This shock would eliminate the
direct bequest of cattle but need not prevent the indirect
transfer of skills, so instead of a fraction (B ⫹ Cb) of the shock
being passed on to the son, only B would be passed on, so
our estimate would be upward biased by an amount Cb/B.
This type of bias will arise for any attribute that is correlated
between generations and is conducive to achieving higher
This content downloaded from 128.252.067.066 on July 25, 2016 19:46:18 PM
All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
121
wealth but is not a direct consequence of parental wealth.
Because we cannot fully specify all the factors and causal
relationships that are at work in these many societies, we
cannot rule out the possibility that some of our estimates of
b may be biased.
In any case, the commentators’ concerns about the lack of
independence among wealth types point to plenty of new
territory to explore with respect to examining the implications
of these interactions. In situations where success in acquiring
one kind of wealth, such as a large group of friends, strongly
favors acquisition of material goods or robust health, the
extent of inequality may be much greater than in a situation
where each family or individual has a chance to prosper in
their pursuit of any wealth type, irrespective of their success
or failure in acquiring other wealth types. We also think that
the uncoupling of material and relational wealth might pro-
vide insights into the intriguing question raised by Robert
Kelly as to why the social-leveling mechanisms observed in
many hunter-gatherer and simple horticultural populations
stop working so effectively in pastoralists and farmers. Per-
haps there is a tipping point where welfare losses resulting
from the diminished popularity of a hoarder are eclipsed by
the benefits of material accumulation, a point more easily
reached when material and relational wealth are relatively
independent. These are questions we will be examining em-
pirically in some of our more complete data sets.
Are Wealth Transmission and Inequality Correlated?
Both Clark and Frederic Pryor are concerned that a central
implication of our model—that there should be a positive
relationship between the degree of intergenerational trans-
mission (as measured by b) and the level of inequality (as
measured by the Gini coefficient)—is not borne out in our
data. (We do not share Pryor’s concern that many of our
estimates are not significantly different from 0 since there is
no reason to discount a reasonably precisely estimated value
of b merely because it is close to 0: some forms of wealth are
simply not transmitted across generations.) Clark states that
the (b, Gini) correlation we document (which is 0.41 when
calculated over the 43 population-specific and wealth
type–specific estimates) is very weak. This objection falls into
the glass half-empty category; it is not clear how high this
figure would have to be to validate our expectation since the
correlation depends on the variability across the 43 obser-
vations in the realized variance of the idiosyncratic shock term
(jl2). Given this, we would expect the (b, Gini) correlation
to rise when the 43 observations are aggregated into their 12
cell means (as in tables A4 and A5 in the CA⫹ online sup-
plement “Estimating the Inheritance of Wealth in Premodern
Societies” in the online edition of Current Anthropology) since
this averaging should remove some of the noise contained in
jl2. This is, in fact, what we observe: the correlation rises to
0.51 when calculated over the 12 wealth class– and economic
 122
system–specific averages. At a still higher level of aggregation,
the correlation between the a-weighted b’s for each produc-
tion system and their a-weighted Gini coefficients is 0.90, a
result that achieves statistical significance at the 10% level
despite resting on only four observations. The fact that there
is a statistically significant and nontrivial relationship between
intergenerational transmission and inequality, observed at all
three levels of aggregation, is strong validation of the central
prediction of our model.
But Pryor notes that there should also exist a positive re-
lationship between the b’s and the Gini coefficients within
each production system as well as in the aggregate, and this
generalization is valid (though it might be difficult to test
given that we have an average of only 11 observations per
production system). As Pryor shows, this is the case for pas-
toral and agricultural but not for hunter-gatherer and hor-
ticultural systems, where the relationship is actually negative.
But this surprising result is driven entirely by the five obser-
vations on body weight, which were available only for a few
hunter-gatherer and horticultural populations. When a
dummy variable is included that flags these few cases, the
coefficient on b as a predictor of the Gini is almost exactly
0 and has a large standard error in these two production
systems.
The reason body weight is an outlier is that, while it is
strongly transmitted across generations, it simply cannot be
very unequally distributed. Unlike material wealth or social
ties, body weight is physically constrained to lie in a fairly
narrow range. One can have 10 times as many cows as the
next herder but not weigh 10 times as much! More important
for our model, an adverse shock can eliminate 90% of one’s
herd, while an individual experiencing an adverse health shock
with a similar weight loss would not survive and, hence, would
not be in our sample. In terms of our model, this physical
constraint on overall variability translates into a lower value
of jl2 for this form of wealth and, hence, a lower Gini for any
given value of b. Its Gini coefficients are thus some 20 points
lower than those for non-body-weight forms of wealth, re-
flecting both the physiological limits on body size and the
sharing of food among families in the societies in question
mentioned by both Pryor and Clark. Nonetheless, the lack of
a positive relationship among hunter-gatherers and horticul-
turalists between Gini and b, even taking account of this
peculiarity of the wealth measure, is puzzling and deserves
further attention.
Pryor offers three possible explanations. The first two of
these strike us not so much as alternatives to but restatements
of our model. He argues that an ergodic stochastic model of
the intergenerational transmission process would “show that
the distribution of wealth asymptotically approaches an equi-
librium that depends on the various societal rules specified
in the model” (p. 112). This is the basis of our reasoning as
well, with b being the parameter that captures the effects of
all the “various societal rules” at work, including those “non-
demographic societal rules” that Pryor emphasizes in his sec-
This content downloaded from 128.252.067.066 on July 25, 2016 19:46:18 PM
All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
ond numbered paragraph and which he notes are discussed
in several of the production system–specific papers. Pryor
thinks that “the inheritance rule, not the calculated b, is the
key variable to examine” (p. 112). But inheritance rules are
difficult to directly quantify in ways that are comparable across
wealth types and production systems and are only relevant to
some sorts of wealth. Our b’s are not an alternative to ex-
amining these rules but, rather, a way of examining the effects
of these rules along with other influences on intergenerational
transmission in a manner that allows quantitative compar-
isons.
Pryor’s third point is that foraging and horticultural so-
cieties engage in more redistribution, which should reduce
wealth inequality properly measured. This, along with Clark’s
related observation on the differences in the magnitude of
shocks across production systems, recommends a more ex-
plicit modeling of the effect of societal institutions and norms
and how these interact with the nature of wealth in sustaining
inequality in the long run. We are currently engaged in this
project.
More direct evidence that influences other than the extent
of intergenerational transmission are at work comes from our
summary table (table A5 in the CA⫹ online supplement).
Averaging the a-weighted b’s for the hunter-gatherer and
horticultural populations, on the one hand, and the farming
and herding populations, on the other, the values of 1/(1 ⫺
b 2) are 1.04 and 1.18, respectively, implying 14% greater
wealth inequality in the latter than the former, assuming that
jl2 does not differ across populations and that the model is
correct. But wealth inequality (measured by the a-weighted
Gini coefficients) is 77% greater in the latter.
Clark’s comment that the model does not illuminate the
persistence of class or racial or other group inequality is well
taken, though his suggested solution appears a bit mechanical;
he simply assumes that “upper-class parents have upper-class
children” (p. 102).
What to Measure and How
Our method for the derivation of a (our measure of the
relative importance of each wealth type) concerned some
commentators. We based a values for each population in the
project on the judgment of the participating ethnographer or
historian and calculated average values of a for various sets
of societies based on these. We view quantification of eth-
nographic information as a critical first step in testing our
model. In addition, we remind readers that as a comparative
check, we calculated values of a for material wealth using
published quantitative data on one horticultural, two pastoral,
and seven small-scale agricultural populations not in our sam-
ple, and these were extremely close to our own ethnographic
estimates for comparable populations in our project sample
(summary in the concluding paper in this special section
[Smith et al. 2010a] and further details in the section “Sta-
Smith et al. Intergenerational Wealth Transmission and Inequality in Premodern Societies: Reply
tistical Estimation of m: a Value for Material Wealth” in the
CA⫹ online supplement). Moreover, even with the unrealistic
assumption that a values are equal across wealth types, we
found that b differed by wealth type and production system.
Shennan wonders why we do not discuss the evolutionary
implications of reproductive success (RS) and rightly points
out that number of children is a poor measure of RS from
an evolutionary perspective. As discussed in our introductory
paper (Bowles, Smith, and Borgerhoff Mulder 2010, in this
issue), we use RS not as a fitness measure but, rather, as an
“indicator of somatic wealth, capturing an individual’s ability
to produce and successfully raise offspring” (p. 9). From this
perspective, there are many justifications for using number
of children as an outcome measure. First, children can be
viewed as direct indices of parental somatic wealth. Pregnancy
and lactation are highly calorically demanding, and children
require a significant investment in time and effort spent in
caretaking. Number of surviving children thus indexes a par-
ent’s physical condition, knowledge, and working capacity,
including parental ability to handle trade-offs between repro-
duction and subsistence work or other obligations. Children
can also serve as indicators of parental wealth whenever they
contribute to household wealth production (e.g., Kramer
2005; Kramer and Boone 2002). In most traditional societies,
children, especially daughters, also yield important help with
the care of younger siblings (Kramer 2005; Mace and Sear
2005). Children may also serve as a key means of generating
relational wealth since durable alliances can be created
through marriage, fostering, or adoption. In sum, we fully
acknowledge that reproductive success can be viewed as both
a form of wealth and an outcome of it. In treating RS as a
form of wealth, we highlight one perspective, while in future
work we intend to highlight the other by directly examining
the relationship between wealth and fitness.
Bradburd suggests that relational wealth may be poorly
measured by number of ties. We agree with this assessment.
Although we have used number of ties as a measure of net-
work in several cases, in others we had the data—and some-
times went to great lengths—to weight each tie by a measure
of quality. For example, each tie in the Bengaluru network
data was weighted using the ratio of each network member’s
income relative to that of the network node. This reduced
the b estimate to 0.114 (SE p .073; P p .117) compared to
the estimate of 0.218 (SE p .060; P p .000) derived from
unweighted data but produced an estimate that better cap-
tures the value of one’s network ties.
Production Systems and Population Sample Bias
Our ability to make inferences about wealth inequality and
inheritance typical of a given type of production system was
inevitably limited by the sample of populations for which
sufficient quantitative multigenerational wealth data existed.
Kelly and others question how useful the production system
categories (forager, pastoralist, horticulturalist, farmer) are at
This content downloaded from 128.252.067.066 on July 25, 2016 19:46:18 PM
All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
123
tracking causality. We acknowledge that our reliance on the
traditional typology of production systems is imperfect be-
cause causal factors do not map neatly onto such a typology,
but we defend it as a useful starting point. Bradburd suggests
that we could perhaps learn more about the role of inter-
generational transmission in contributing to inequality by
conducting a conventional cross-cultural study of the ways
in which wealth is generated, transferred, maintained, and
dispersed. Presumably, he is thinking of using a comparative
database like the Human Relations Area Files or the Outline
of Cultural Materials (http://www.yale.edu/hraf/; Murdock et
al. 2006). Such a study would be a useful complement to ours
but runs into the usual kinds of problems—relatively limited
information (and/or codes) on inheritance, the near-absence
of data on the transmission of relational and embodied wealth,
and reliance on normative statements rather than behavioral
observations.
With regard to possible bias in the set of populations in-
cluded in production system category and the sets of measures
used, we were obviously limited by cases for which the kinds
of data required to apply our model were available. Bradburd
is concerned that inferences about horticulturalists are biased
given our sample of four relatively egalitarian horticulturalist
populations. However, larger samples indicate that the great
majority of horticultural societies are egalitarian (see Gurven
et al. 2010, in this issue, table 1). In addition, our sample is
informative in demonstrating that domestication alone does
not lead to increases in wealth inequality. The critique is
nevertheless quite valid and can even be generalized: any ty-
pology used to categorize populations will be a generalization
with many exceptions illustrating a wide range of variation.
Similarly, we could not obtain intergenerational wealth data
on complex hunter-gatherers, who exhibit extensive property
rights and nonegalitarian social relations, as noted by Ames;
nevertheless, our sample includes Lamalerans and Meriam
(populations with corporate kin groups holding property
rights of various kinds), enhancing the range of variation in
the forager sample.
We addressed the problem of production system sample
bias in two ways. First, we reclassified societies (Ache as hor-
ticulturalists and Kipsigis as pastoralists) and reran our anal-
yses by production category, and we found no significant
change in average b from our previous analysis (table A7 in
the CA⫹ online supplement). Second, each of the papers in
this issue discusses results and evaluates conclusions in light
of the sample bias of analyzed cases. Thus, Gurven et al.
(2010) discuss island horticulturalist populations and other
more hierarchical societies for which requisite data were not
available, and Smith et al. (2010b, in this issue) do the same
for hunter-gatherers. Even though the horticulture chapter
only includes quantitative analysis of four societies, our initial
working hypothesis would be that more transegalitarian hor-
ticultural populations will show higher b for the limited re-
sources (e.g., land) that likely would also exhibit higher a.
Finding such a horticultural population that looks more like
 124
an agricultural population in terms of b and/or a would help
focus attention on the social institutions or ecological factors
that produce such a result.
Still, the concerns raised in this regard by Bradburd, Kelly,
and others are valid. We have plenty of ideas about the causes
of inequality, and in our ongoing research, with a larger sam-
ple and more data, we will use more specific explanatory
variables, paralleling the work of Henrich et al. (2004) in their
study of cross-cultural variability in notions of fairness. By
analyzing the effect of various possible independent variables,
we should be able to move beyond the typological approach
of production system variation. In addition, study of the var-
iation in wealth inheritance among societies with similar pro-
duction systems may further illuminate the roles of norms
and institutions and other factors.
Multiple Determinants
Ambitious papers that seek generalizations from comparative
data inevitably favor some hypotheses or explanatory factors
and ignore others. How do we justify what is not included as
an explanation for inequality? Håkansson (1998, 2004) begs
for more attention to regional economic exchange networks.
World system theorists attribute much of economic inequality
to exchange, trade, and competition occasioned by such dy-
namics beyond the borders of the population of interest, and
rightly so—regional dynamics can indeed spur intensification,
wealth accumulation, and political centralization, but they do
so through their effects on the wealth types we study. Thus, as
Håkansson found, the nineteenth-century East African ivory
and cloth caravans extended preexisting trade networks and
increased the value of marketable goods, providing a stimulus
for agricultural intensification, accumulation of livestock, po-
litical centralization, and, one might assume, increased in-
equality. This happened through increasing the value of live-
stock—in our terms, raising the a value of material wealth
in pastoralist systems. Thus, we do not see world systems
theory as providing an alternative to our own explanation for
the emergence of inequality.
Flinn draws attention to another potentially omitted di-
mension, the role of differential power in generating inequal-
ity. This is a question with which many, from Max Weber
onward, have grappled. Is power just another form of wealth,
is it derived directly from relational wealth (e.g., an indi-
vidual’s centrality in a network), or is it an entirely indepen-
dent (and overlooked) dimension, possibly equivalent to
status? These are wonderful questions but not ones that our
research was designed to address, and until comparable em-
pirical measures of status from multiple populations are avail-
able, we cannot determine the intergenerational transmission
of status.
Bradburd objects to our statement (in the essay on hunter-
gatherers by Smith et al. [2010b] in this special section) that
“it is much harder to construct institutions to transmit social
This content downloaded from 128.252.067.066 on July 25, 2016 19:46:18 PM
All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010
ties and knowledge than to do so for material wealth” (p. 31).
His objection appears to be that ownership, wealth trans-
mission, and so on require social institutions; we of course
agree, and the quoted statement in no way implies otherwise.
It simply claims that it is relatively difficult to construct in-
stitutions to delineate ownership of (and control over) certain
kinds of wealth. More important, examples of the ways in
which our analyses help reveal the importance of social in-
stitutions in shaping wealth transmission and inequality are
discussed throughout the set of papers in this special section.
Consequences of Agricultural Intensification
Thomas Håkansson argues that we overstate the relationship
between intensive agriculture and political complexity, as well
as the relationship between complexity and the scarcity of
arable land due to population pressure. This point is some-
what peripheral to our argument, which addresses economic
inequality, not political complexity, and we believe that the
relationship between complexity, power hierarchies, central-
ization, and inequality lies beyond the purview of this paper.
We certainly agree with Håkansson that “intensive cultivation
is often present in the archaeological record before the emer-
gence of political centralization” (p. 105). Our sample of ag-
ricultural societies bears this out: three of the eight intensive
agricultural societies in our sample—the Khasi, the Kipsigis,
and the Yomut—have limited internal political complexity
and are only peripherally involved in the politics of the mod-
ern state societies in which they are located.
Similarly, we discuss scarcity of land as a potentially im-
portant factor in the evolution of wealth inequality. Our pro-
posal, however, is that once land becomes a scarce defensible
resource, the potential exists for the emergence of significant
inequality in wealth. This does not mean that land must be
scarce due to population pressure, but only relative to effective
demand. We agree with Håkansson that various forms of
landscape modifications such as terracing, soil creation, or
irrigation may exist in the absence of population pressure,
but we argue that such modifications produce inequalities in
land productivity that increase motivations to sequester land,
thereby contributing to persistent wealth inequalities.
Origins of Inequality
Several commentators, particularly Boone and Kelly, are dis-
appointed that our model (and resulting analysis) is not more
comprehensive—that we do not directly tackle “the formation
of social inequality.” Our model, however, is clearly not de-
signed to address this broad question; rather, it analyzes the
stability or perpetuation of wealth inequality given certain
material and socioeconomic constraints. We argue that degree
of intergenerational wealth transmission (i.e., the correlation
of offspring wealth with parental wealth, however instan-
tiated) in conjunction with random economic shocks drives
Smith et al. Intergenerational Wealth Transmission and Inequality in Premodern Societies: Reply
wealth inequality to some long-run equilibrium value. We
further propose that different types of wealth vary in their
degree of transmissibility and that this (coupled with insti-
tutional and other factors) can help explain why societies vary
so much in their observed levels of wealth inequality. This
framework then allows us to discuss some of the questions
that concern Boone and Kelly, but these inferences and spec-
ulations (found near the end of the four papers on production
systems as well as in the concluding paper) are not direct
consequences of the model per se.
However, let us briefly consider what Kelly poses as a key
problem: given the “fierce egalitarianism” enforced through
“leveling mechanisms” said to be characteristic of ancestral
hunter-gatherers, what can we say about “why the leveling
mechanisms stopped working” (p. 109)? One possibility is
that new forms of material wealth made self-insurance
through storage more feasible, reducing the importance of
relational wealth. An example of this comes from Cashdan’s
(1985) comparison of !Kung groups with and without cattle,
demonstrating how, when the option to reduce risk through
private means becomes available, people do hoard, and this
becomes more socially acceptable. Another reason that lev-
eling mechanisms stopped working, or at least became atten-
uated, might be that the social creation of new forms of
material wealth generated opportunities for controlling and
thereby directly and indirectly transmitting inequalities in
wealth. We sketch out a scenario along these lines in the
concluding paper (as well as varieties of it in the other papers)
but do not claim originality or direct derivation from our
wealth-transmission model. It will require much future re-
search to see if the dynamics of wealth transmission formal-
ized in our model do indeed fruitfully interact with social
and ecological factors in the manner suggested by such a
scenario.
Conclusions
Kelly expresses disappointment that the main findings of this
project are neither remarkable nor new. Ultimately this judg-
ment is a matter of opinion rather than of fact or logic.
However, we are skeptical that our findings merely corrob-
orate received wisdom. For example, Kelly cites our finding
that material wealth is more conducive to inequality than
other forms as unsurprising, yet this is disputed in other
commentaries and elsewhere in the literature. We have not
encountered many publications that argue—let alone quan-
titatively demonstrate—that foragers and horticulturalists are
virtually indistinguishable in their patterns of wealth inheri-
tance and inequality or even that foragers lacking complex
sociopolitical structures (as is the case with our sample) show
levels of wealth inheritance and inequality persistence that are
similar to those found in many industrialized societies. Sim-
ilarly, our demonstration that pastoralists show levels of
wealth inequality as high as densely populated farmers calls
This content downloaded from 128.252.067.066 on July 25, 2016 19:46:18 PM
All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
125
into question the widely held view of egalitarian pastoralists.
Of course, these are preliminary findings, affected by possible
bias in the sample of populations and other limitations as
discussed above. But they surely constitute more than a simple
corroboration of what everybody already knew about cross-
cultural variation in wealth inheritance.
In conclusion, we thank the commentators for their often
incisive comments on the set of papers in this special section.
Given space constraints, we have not been able to address
every comment, and in particular have mostly ignored those
that endorse our efforts and findings and amplify their pos-
sible significance. We are pleased that most commentators
perceive originality and explanatory value in our approach.
We look forward to incorporating many of their suggestions
in future research we are currently developing.
References Cited
Borgerhoff Mulder, Monique, Samuel Bowles, Tom Hertz,
Adrian Bell, Jan Beise, Greg Clark, Ila Fazzio, et al. 2009.
Intergenerational transmission of wealth and the dynamics
of inequality in small-scale societies. Science 326(5953):
682–688.
Bowles, Samuel, Eric Alden Smith, and Monique Borgerhoff
Mulder. 2010. The emergence and persistence of inequality
in premodern societies: introduction to the special section.
Current Anthropology 51(1):7–17.
Cashdan, Elizabeth. 1985. Coping with risk: reciprocity
among the Basarwa of Northern Botswana. Man, n.s.,
20(3):454–474.
Gurven, Michael, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Paul L.
Hooper, Hillard Kaplan, Robert Quinlan, Rebecca Sear, Eric
Schniter, et al. 2010. Domestication alone does not lead to
inequality: intergenerational wealth transmission among
horticulturalists. Current Anthropology 51(1):49–64.
Håkansson, N. Thomas. 1998. Rulers and rainmakers in pre-
colonial South Pare, Tanzania: exchange and ritual experts
in political centralization. Ethnology 37:263–283.
———. 2004. The human ecology of world systems in East
Africa: the impact of the ivory trade. Human Ecology 32(5):
561–591.
Henrich, Joseph, Robert Boyd, Samuel Bowles, Colin Ca-
merer, Ernst Fehr, and Herbert Gintis, eds. 2004. Foun-
dations of human sociality: economic experiments and eth-
nographic evidence from fifteen small-scale societies. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Kramer, Karen. 2005. Children’s help and the pace of repro-
duction: cooperative breeding in humans. Evolutionary An-
thropology 14(6):224–237.
Kramer, Karen, and James Boone. 2002. Why intensive ag-
riculturalists have higher fertility: a household labor budget
approach to subsistence intensification and fertility rates.
Current Anthropology 43(3):511–517.
 126 Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1, February 2010

Mace, Ruth, and Rebecca Sear. 2005. Are humans cooperative
breeders? In Grandmotherhood: the evolutionary significance
of the second half of female life. Eckart Voland, Athanasios
Chasiotis, and Wulf Schiefenhövel, eds. Pp. 143–159. Pis-
cataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Murdock, George Peter, Clellan S. Ford, Alfred E. Hudson,
Raymond Kennedy, Leo W. Simmons, John M. W. Whiting,
et al. 2006. Outline of cultural materials. 6th edition. New
Haven, CT: Human Relations Area Files.
Smith, Eric Alden, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Samuel
Bowles, Michael Gurven, Tom Hertz, and Mary K. Shenk.
2010a. Production systems, inheritance, and inequality in
premodern societies: conclusions. Current Anthropology
51(1):65–83.
Smith, Eric Alden, Kim Hill, Frank W. Marlowe, David Nolin,
Polly Wiessner, Michael Gurven, Samuel Bowles, Monique
Borgerhoff Mulder, Tom Hertz, and Adrian Bell. 2010b.
Wealth transmission and inequality among hunter-gath-
erers. Current Anthropology 51(1):19–34.
Walker, Phillip L., and Barry S. Hewlett. 1990. Dental health
and social status among central African foragers and farm-
ers. American Anthropologist 92(2):383–398.

This content downloaded from 128.252.067.066 on July 25, 2016 19:46:18 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
Bonus
Primitive communism
Marx’s idea that societies were naturally
egalitarian and communal before farming is
widely influential and quite wrong

by Manvir Singh

Manvir Singh is an anthropologist and postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for
Advanced Study in Toulouse. He studies the origins of universal or near-universal
cultural practices, including music, marriage, shamanism and witchcraft.

Karl Marx died on 14 March 1883. At the funeral three days later, Friedrich Engels
wasted little time on their 40-year friendship, focusing instead on Marx’s legacy. ‘Just
as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature,’ Engels said, ‘so
Marx discovered the law of development of human history.’ His friend had died
‘beloved, revered and mourned by millions of revolutionary fellow-workers – from
the mines of Siberia to California, in all parts of Europe and America … His name will
endure through the ages, and so will his work!’
Engels made sure of this. In the following years, he devoted himself to organising and
publishing Marx’s ideas. From a mélange of fragments and revisions, he produced
the second and third volumes of Das Kapital, in 1885 and 1894 respectively. He
meant to publish a fourth but died before he got to it. (It was later published as
eories of Surplus Value.) Still, the most peculiar project born from Marx’s notes was
released a year after his death. Engels titled it e Origin of the Family, Private Property
and the State. I’ll call it e Origin, for short.

e Origin is like Yuval Noah Harari’s blockbuster Sapiens (2014) but written by a
19th-century socialist: a sweeping take on the dawn of property, patriarchy,
monogamy and materialism. Like many of its contemporaries, it arranged societies
on an evolutionary ladder from savagery to barbarism to civilisation. Although wrong
in most ways, e Origin was described by a recent historian as ‘among the more
important and politically applicable texts in the Marxist canon’, shaping everything
from feminist ideology to the divorce policies of Maoist China.

Of the text’s legacies, the most popular is primitive communism. e idea goes like
this. Once upon a time, private property was unknown. Food went to those in need.
Everyone was cared for. en agriculture arose and, with it, ownership over land,
labour and wild resources. e organic community splintered under the weight of
competition. e story predates Marx and Engels. e patron saint of capitalism,
Adam Smith, proposed something similar, as did the 19th-century American
anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan. Even ancient Buddhist texts described a pre-
state society free of property. But e Origin is the idea’s most important codification.
It argued for primitive communism, circulated it widely, and welded it to Marxist
principles.

Today, many writers and academics still treat primitive communism as a historical
fact. To take an influential example, the economists Samuel Bowles and Jung-Kyoo
Choi have argued for 20 years that property rights coevolved with farming. For them,
the question is less whether private property predated farming, but rather why it
appeared at that time. In 2017, an article in e Atlantic covering their work asserted
plainly: ‘For most of human history, there was no such thing as private property.’ A
leading anthropology textbook captures the supposed consensus when it states: ‘ e
concept of private property is far from universal and tends to occur only in complex
societies with social inequality.’

Historical narratives matter. In his bestseller Humankind (2019), Rutger Bregman

took the fact that ‘our ancestors had scarcely any notion of private property’ as
evidence of fundamental human goodness. In Civilized to Death (2019), Christopher
Ryan wrote that pre-agricultural societies were defined by ‘obligatory sharing of
minimal property, open access to the necessities of life, and a sense of gratitude toward
an environment that provided what was needed.’ As a result, he concluded: ‘ e
future I imagine (on a good day) looks a lot like the world inhabited by our
ancestors…’

Primitive communism is appealing. It endorses an Edenic image of humanity, one in

which modernity has corrupted our natural goodness. But this is precisely why we
should question it. If a century and a half of research on humanity has taught us
anything, it is to be sceptical of the seductive. From race science to the noble savage,
the history of anthropology is cluttered with the corpses of convenient stories, of
narratives that misrepresent human diversity to advance ideological aims. Is primitive
communism any different?

According to the Aché, former hunter-gatherers living in Paraguay, they first met Kim
Hill when he was a child. ey adopted him, raised him, and taught him their
language. Hill, however, remembers their first encounter differently. It was Christmas
of 1977. He was 24 years old. He had persuaded the Peace Corps to fly him out to a
Catholic mission with newly contacted hunter-gatherers. A priest welcomed Hill, but
‘he had a lot of duties across the border in Brazil,’ Hill told me. ‘So he drove me into
the mission, dropped me off, and said “Here’s the keys to my house.”’ en the priest
left for two weeks. us began ‘the most exciting, fun adventure I could imagine’.

e Aché that Hill first met had recently been contacted and settled at the mission.
ey didn’t know how to farm, so they regularly packed up and headed to the forest,
sometimes for weeks at a time. e priest warned Hill not to join them. ‘He said: “You
don’t have enough skills – it’s really rough – they’re going to walk really far – you
won’t be able to eat the food” – blah blah blah.’ So, ‘of course, the first thing I did was
ignore his advice completely.’

e first trip was tough. e Aché didn’t have clothes, so Hill went barefoot and wore
nothing but gym shorts. e forest shredded his feet. Vines and spiny plants
lacerated his legs. He later wrote in his diary: ‘I have seen my blood every single day
for the past month.’ At night, the Aché slept on the ground. Struggling to keep warm,
children crawled on Hill, making it hard to catch more than 10 minutes of sleep. He
enjoyed hunted meat, but he was less prepared for the hundreds of fat palm larvae
sitting between him and starvation.

Men were forbidden from eating meat they’d

acquired. eir wives and children got no more
than anyone else
It was on that first trip that Hill saw the Aché share their meat. A man returning from
a hunt dropped an animal in the middle of camp. Another person, the butcher,
prepared piles for each family. A third person distributed. ‘At the time, it seemed kind
of logical to me,’ Hill said. e scene reminded him of a family barbecue where
everyone gets a plate.

Yet the more he lived among the Aché, the more astonishing food-sharing seemed.
Men were forbidden from eating meat they’d acquired. eir wives and children
received no more than anyone else. When he later built detailed genealogies, he
discovered that, contrary to his expectations, bandmates were often unrelated. Most
importantly, food-sharing didn’t just happen on special days. It was a daily
occurrence, a psychological and economic centrepiece of Aché society.

What he started to see, in other words, was ‘almost pure economic communalism –
and I really didn’t think that was possible.’

Hill’s first trip to Paraguay got him hooked on anthropology. After the Peace Corps,
he returned to the United States and wrote a PhD thesis on Aché foraging. Now, four
decades later, he is professor of anthropology at Arizona State University and
renowned for his work on hunter-gatherers and remote peoples. According to his CV,
he has spent 190 months – nearly 16 years – conducting fieldwork.

Not all of that has been with the Aché. In 1985, he started working with another
group, the Hiwi of Venezuela. He didn’t expect dramatic differences from the Aché.
e Hiwi, too, were hunter-gatherers. e Hiwi, too, lived in lowland South America.
Yet Hiwi society felt like a new world. e Aché lived in mobile bands of 20 to
30 people. e Hiwi lived in villages of more than 100 people for most of the year. e
Aché neither did drugs nor danced. e Hiwi snorted hallucinogens and had tribal
dances near-daily. e Aché spent most of each day strenuously getting food. e
Hiwi foraged for barely a couple hours, preferring to relax in hammocks. e Aché
divorced constantly. e Hiwi, virtually never.

en, there was food-sharing. In the primitive communism of the Aché, hunters had
little control over distributions: they couldn’t favour their families, and food flowed
according to need. None of these applied to the Hiwi. When meat came into a Hiwi
village, the hunter’s family kept a larger batch for themselves, distributing shares to a
measly three of 36 other families. In other words, as Hill and his colleagues wrote in
2000 in the journal Human Ecology, ‘most Hiwi families receive nothing when a food
resource is brought into the village.’
 By exercising control over distributions, hunters
convert meat into relationships
Hiwi sharing tells us something important about primitive communism: hunter-
gatherers are diverse. Most have been less communistic than the Aché. When we
survey forager societies, for instance, we find that hunters in many communities
enjoyed special rights. ey kept trophies. ey consumed organs and marrow before
sharing. ey received the tastiest parts and exclusive rights to a killed animal’s
offspring.

e most important privilege hunters enjoyed was selecting who gets meat. Selective
sharing is powerful. It extends a bond between giver and recipient that the giver can
pull on when they are in need. Refusing to share, meanwhile, is a rejection of
friendship, an expression of ill will. When the anthropologist Richard Lee lived
among the Kalahari !Kung, he noticed that a hunter named N!eisi once ignored his
sister’s husband while passing out warthog meat. When asked why, N!eisi replied
harshly: ‘ is one I want to eat with my friends.’ N!eisi’s brother-in-law took the hint
and, three days later, left camp with his wives and children. By exercising control over
distributions, hunters convert meat into relationships.

To own something, we say, means excluding others from enjoying its benefits. I own
an apple when I can eat it and you cannot. You own a toothbrush when you can use it
and I cannot. Hunters’ special privileges shifted property rights along a continuum
from fully public to fully private. e more benefits they could monopolise – from
trophies to organs to social capital – the more they could be said to own their meat.

Compared with the Aché, many mobile, band-living foragers lay closer to the private
end of the property continuum. Agta hunters in the Philippines set aside meat to
trade with farmers. Meat brought in by a solitary Efe hunter in Central Africa was
‘entirely his to allocate’. And among the Sirionó, an Amazonian people who speak a
language closely related to the Aché, people could do little about food-hoarding
‘except to go out and look for their own’. Aché sharing might embody primitive
communism. Yet, Hill admits, ‘the Aché are probably the extreme case.’

Hunters’ privileges are inconvenient for narratives about primitive communism.

More damning, however, is a starker, simpler fact. All hunter-gatherers had private
property, even the Aché.

Individual Aché owned bows, arrows, axes and cooking implements. Women owned
the fruit they collected. Even meat became private property as it was handed out. Hill
explained: ‘If I set my armadillo leg on [a fern leaf] and went out for a minute to take
a pee in the forest and came back and somebody took it? Yeah, that was stealing.’

Some proponents of primitive communism concede that foragers owned small

trinkets but insist they didn’t own wild resources. But this too is mistaken. Shoshone
families owned eagle nests. Bearlake Athabaskans owned beaver dens and fishing
sites. Especially common is the ownership of trees. When an Andaman Islander man
stumbled upon a tree suitable for making canoes, he told his group mates about it.
From then, it was his and his alone. Similar rules existed among the Deg Hit’an of
Alaska, the Northern Paiute of the Great Basin, and the Enlhet of the arid Paraguayan
plains. In fact, by one economist ’s estimate, more than 70 per cent of hunter-
gatherer societies recognised private ownership over land or trees.

e respect for property rights is clearest when someone violates them. To appreciate
this, consider the Mbuti, one of the short-statured (‘pygmy’) hunter-gatherers of
Central Africa.

e Ute of Colorado whipped thieves. e Ainu

of Japan sliced their earlobes off
Much of what we know about Mbuti society comes from Colin Turnbull, a British-
American anthropologist who stayed with them in the late 1950s. Turnbull was kind,
strong and courageous. From 1959 until his death, he lived in an openly gay,
interracial relationship, eventually resigning from the American Museum of Natural
History under charges of discrimination against him and his partner. He spent his
later years campaigning for death row inmates and, upon his death, donated his
entire estate and savings to the United Negro College Fund. ‘ roughout his life,’
wrote a biographer, ‘Turnbull was motivated by a deep-seated wish to find goodness,
beauty and power in the oppressed or ridiculed and, by making those qualities
known to the world, reveal the evils of Western civilisation.’

For some, these motivations clouded Turnbull’s descriptions of the Mbuti. He has
been criticised for painting an ‘idealised picture’ of the Mbuti as ‘simple and childlike
creatures’ living ‘a romantic and harmonious life in the bountiful rain forest.’ Yet,
even if he did idealise, his writings still undermine claims of primitive communism.
He described a society in which theft was prohibited, and where even the most
desperate members suffered for violating property rights.

Take, for instance, Pepei, a Mbuti man who in 1958 was 19 years old and still
unmarried. Unlike most bachelors, who slept next to the fire, Pepei lived in a hut with
his younger brother. But instead of collecting building materials, he swiped them. He
snuck around at night, plucking a leaf from this hut and a sapling from that. He also
filched food. He was an orphan after all, and a bachelor, so he had few people to help
him prepare meals. When food mysteriously disappeared, Pepei always claimed to
have seen a dog snatch it.

‘Nobody really minded Pepei’s stealing,’ wrote Turnbull, ‘because he was a born
comic and a great storyteller. But he had gone too far in stealing from old Sau.’

Old Sau was a skinny, feisty widow. She lived a couple of huts down from Pepei, and
one night caught him skulking around in her hut. As he lifted the lid of a pot, she
smacked him with a pestle, grabbed his arm, twisted it behind his back, and shoved
him into the open.

Justice was brutal. Men ran out and held Pepei, while youths broke off thorny
branches and thrashed him. Eventually Pepei broke away and ran into the forest
crying. After 24 hours, he returned to camp and went straight to his hut unseen. ‘His
hut was between mine and Sau’s,’ wrote Turnbull, ‘and I heard him come in, and I
heard him crying softly because even his brother wouldn’t speak to him.’

Other foragers punished stealing, too. e Ute of Colorado whipped thieves. e

Ainu of Japan sliced their earlobes off. For the Yaghan of Tierra del Fuego, accusing
someone of robbery was a ‘deadly insult’. Lorna Marshall, who spent years living with
the Kalahari !Kung, reported that a man was once killed for taking honey. rough
violence towards offenders, foragers reified private property.

Is primitive communism another seductive but incorrect anthropological myth? On

the one hand, no hunter-gatherer society lacked private property. And although they
all shared food, most balanced sharing with special rights. On the other hand, living
in a society like the Aché’s was a masterclass in reallocation. It’s hard to imagine
farmers engaging in need-based redistribution on that scale.

Whatever we call it, the sharing economy that Hill observed with the Aché does not
reflect some lost Edenic goodness. Rather, it sprang from a simpler source:
interdependence. Aché families relied on each other for survival. We share with you
today so that you can share with us next week, or when we get sick, or when we are
pregnant. Hill once saw a man fall from a tree and break his hip. ‘He couldn’t walk for
three months, and in those three months, he produced zero food,’ Hill said. ‘And you
would think that he would have starved to death and his family would have starved to
death. But, of course, nothing happened like that, because everybody provisioned
him the whole time.’

is is partly about reciprocity. But it’s also about something deeper. When people
are locked in networks of interdependence, they become invested in each other’s
welfare. If I rely on three other families to keep me alive and get me food when I
cannot, then not only do I want to maintain bonds with them – I also want them to be
healthy and strong and capable.

Interdependence might seem enviable. Yet it begets a cruelty often overlooked in talk
about primitive communism. When a person goes from a lifeline to a long-term
burden, reasons to keep them alive can vanish. In their book Aché Life History (1996),
Hill and the anthropologist Ana Magdalena Hurtado listed many Aché people who
were killed, abandoned or buried alive: widows, sick people, a blind woman, an infant
born too soon, a boy with a paralysed hand, a child who was ‘funny looking’, a girl
with bad haemorrhoids. Such opportunism suffuses all social interactions. But it is
acute for foragers living at the edge of subsistence, for whom cooperation is essential
and wasted efforts can be fatal.

Once that need to survive dissipated, even

friends could become disposable
Consider, for example, how the Aché treated orphans. ‘We really hate orphans,’ said
an Aché person in 1978. Another Aché person was recorded after seeing jaguar
tracks:

Don’t cry now. Are you crying because you want your mother to die? Do you
want to be buried with your dead mother? Do you want to be thrown in the
grave with your mother and stepped on until your excrement comes out?
Your mother is going to die if you keep crying. When you are an orphan
nobody will ever take care of you again.

e Aché had among the highest infanticide and child homicide rates ever reported.
Of children born in the forest, 14 per cent of boys and 23 per cent of girls were killed
before the age of 10, nearly all of them orphans. An infant who lost their mother
during the first year of life was always killed.

(Since acculturation, many Aché have regretted killing children and infants. In Aché
Life History, Hill and Hurtado reported an interview with a man who strangled a 13-
year-old girl nearly 20 years earlier. He ‘asked for our forgiveness’, they wrote, ‘and
acknowledged that he never should have carried out the task and simply “wasn’t
thinking”.’)

Hunter-gatherers shared because they had to. ey put food into their bandmates’
stomachs because their survival depended on it. But once that need dissipated, even
friends could become disposable.
 e popularity of the idea of primitive communism, especially in the face of
contradictory evidence, tells us something important about why narratives succeed.
Primitive communism may misrepresent forager societies. But it is simple, and it
accords with widespread beliefs about the arc of human history. If we assume that
societies went from small to big, or from egalitarian to despotic, then it makes sense
that they transitioned from property-less harmony to selfish competition, too. Even if
the facts of primitive communism are off, the story feels right.

More important than its simplicity and narrative resonance, however, is primitive
communism’s political expediency. For anyone hoping to critique existing
institutions, primitive communism conveniently casts modern society as a perversion
of a more prosocial human nature. Yet this storytelling is counterproductive. By
drawing a contrast between an angelic past and our greedy present, primitive
communism blinds us to the true determinants of trust, freedom and equity. If we
want to build better societies, the way forward is neither to live as hunter-gatherers
nor to bang the drum of a make-believe state of nature. Rather, it is to work with
humans as they are, warts and all.

aeon.co 19 April 2022