[wahern]

Ghana's GINI index is only a couple points higher than the US (43 vs 41), and the same as Mexico.

I don't think wealth inequality explains this at all. But what rigid social institutions of any kind tend do is inhibit mobility. Moreover, kinship groups like this tend to lock-in relative wealth by lineage--the wealthiest family of a kin group from 3 generations ago will be much more likely (relative to other cultures) to be the wealthiest family 3 generations from now. Greater mobility means productivity increases faster, which raises absolute wealth for everybody even if relative wealth disparities across the entire population remain constant.

[Retric]

> even if relative wealth disparities remain constant.

Relative wealth disparity increases as absolute wealth increases because below a minimum level of income people starve. IE you can’t make 1/10th the median wage in a subsistence economy long term you just die. But a homeless person can survive for decades in the US on ~500$ a month.

[thaumasiotes]

> IE you can’t make 1/10th the median wage in a subsistence economy long term you just die. But a homeless person can survive for decades in the US on ~500$ a month.

There are two things I'd like to know more about for this:

1. Is the homeless person doing their survival in an area with a markedly lower median wage than the median wage their income is being measured against? (i.e. is "1/10 the median wage" an illusion created by including foreign communities in the 'median wage'?)

2. Is the homeless person's low income measured by excluding their income from in-kind handouts ("someone kind bought me a sandwich") and foraging ("I found a pizza in the dumpster")?

[Retric]

2) This was more a hypothetical argument than an analysis of a specific individual. Humans survived before electricity let alone AC. They can’t survive without food. What’s the minimum someone can meet the basic needs for survival paying market rates?

But the argument still stands if you want to raise the minimum in the US to 1,000$/month to account for hidden value and require shelter. 8 people sharing a 2BR apartment is very much a thing.

[JumpCrisscross]

Does this effect have a name? I wonder how you'd adust for it in a modified GINI metric.

[forthwall]

I don't think social factors are not necessarily a nonfactor, more that this article claims that income equality within kinship groups is a forcing function for lack of economic growth. My claim is that the inequality that these countries face not just between each other within the nation but in our globalized economies, access to resources, capital and labor and thus the downstream effects of smaller markets, less need for labor will lead to less growth. I think you can have economic growth with kinship society if more people within the kinship have greater access to wealth growing, the issue here is that there's limited resources and the kinship society exists as an effect of less resources than the other-way around

> the wealthiest family of a kin group from 3 generations ago will be much more likely (relative to other cultures) to be the wealthiest family 3 generations from now.

I am not sure if this claim is true as well, wealth generally does stay within family lineages across cultures, generally people losing their wealth or even gaining it is an outlier. See any landed gentry in Europe, Asia

Actually; you can see this in America, as income continues to be more concentrated, and more unequal, economic productivity for an individual does go down as there's less opportunity to accrue wealth as before.

[wahern]

> I am not sure if this claim is true as well, wealth generally does stay within family lineages across cultures, generally people losing their wealth or even gaining it is an outlier. See any landed gentry in Europe, Asia

Your examples tend to prove the effect of kinship structures, which were much stronger historically across all cultures, especially outside NW Europe (where nuclear family dynamics go back millennia, which some people argue is not merely coincidental with the emergence of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution).

The relevant question isn't whether wealth stickiness exists, but the magnitude of the effect and how it changes.

Kinship groups can absolutely be useful and beneficial, but as a rigid social institution it can also take on a life of its own, as for any social institution. We can't have meaningful discussions about this stuff without understanding magnitudes and context, otherwise its too easy to cynically equivocate.