Inheritances, social classes, and wealth distribution.

We consider a simple theoretical model to investigate the impact of inheritances on the wealth distribution. Wealth is described as a finite resource, which remains constant over different generations and is divided equally among offspring. All other sources of wealth are neglected. We consider diff...

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Autores principales: Pedro Patrício, Nuno A M Araújo
Formato: article
Lenguaje:EN
Publicado: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2021
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Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/8d0d035ecacc46d1a853873d2b3b9bf8
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spelling oai:doaj.org-article:8d0d035ecacc46d1a853873d2b3b9bf82021-12-02T20:13:26ZInheritances, social classes, and wealth distribution.1932-620310.1371/journal.pone.0259002https://doaj.org/article/8d0d035ecacc46d1a853873d2b3b9bf82021-01-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0259002https://doaj.org/toc/1932-6203We consider a simple theoretical model to investigate the impact of inheritances on the wealth distribution. Wealth is described as a finite resource, which remains constant over different generations and is divided equally among offspring. All other sources of wealth are neglected. We consider different societies characterized by a different offspring probability distribution. We find that, if the population remains constant, the society reaches a stationary wealth distribution. We show that inequality emerges every time the number of children per family is not always the same. For realistic offspring distributions from developed countries, the model predicts a Gini coefficient of G ≈ 0.3. If we divide the society into wealth classes and set the probability of getting married to depend on the distance between classes, the stationary wealth distribution crosses over from an exponential to a power-law regime as the number of wealth classes and the level of class distinction increase.Pedro PatrícioNuno A M AraújoPublic Library of Science (PLoS)articleMedicineRScienceQENPLoS ONE, Vol 16, Iss 10, p e0259002 (2021)
institution DOAJ
collection DOAJ
language EN
topic Medicine
R
Science
Q
spellingShingle Medicine
R
Science
Q
Pedro Patrício
Nuno A M Araújo
Inheritances, social classes, and wealth distribution.
description We consider a simple theoretical model to investigate the impact of inheritances on the wealth distribution. Wealth is described as a finite resource, which remains constant over different generations and is divided equally among offspring. All other sources of wealth are neglected. We consider different societies characterized by a different offspring probability distribution. We find that, if the population remains constant, the society reaches a stationary wealth distribution. We show that inequality emerges every time the number of children per family is not always the same. For realistic offspring distributions from developed countries, the model predicts a Gini coefficient of G ≈ 0.3. If we divide the society into wealth classes and set the probability of getting married to depend on the distance between classes, the stationary wealth distribution crosses over from an exponential to a power-law regime as the number of wealth classes and the level of class distinction increase.
format article
author Pedro Patrício
Nuno A M Araújo
author_facet Pedro Patrício
Nuno A M Araújo
author_sort Pedro Patrício
title Inheritances, social classes, and wealth distribution.
title_short Inheritances, social classes, and wealth distribution.
title_full Inheritances, social classes, and wealth distribution.
title_fullStr Inheritances, social classes, and wealth distribution.
title_full_unstemmed Inheritances, social classes, and wealth distribution.
title_sort inheritances, social classes, and wealth distribution.
publisher Public Library of Science (PLoS)
publishDate 2021
url https://doaj.org/article/8d0d035ecacc46d1a853873d2b3b9bf8
work_keys_str_mv AT pedropatricio inheritancessocialclassesandwealthdistribution
AT nunoamaraujo inheritancessocialclassesandwealthdistribution
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