A comparison of wealth inequality in humans and non-humans

Ivan D Chase (1) , Raphaël Douady (2, 1) , Dianna K Padilla (1)

1 SBU - Stony Brook University [SUNY]
2 CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne

HIGHLIGHTS • We present the first description of "wealth" inequality in a non-human animal • We describe the distribution of snail shells occupied by a hermit crab species • The distribution of shells resembles the common form of human wealth distributions • Hermit crabs may provide an animal model of the dynamics generating wealth inequality • Shell distribution in hermit crabs provides a baseline to compare to human inequality

Keywords: Wealth distribution; Power-law (Pareto) distributions; Fat tailsVacancy chains; Hermit crabs; Human–animal comparisons

Domains: Economics and Finance

Ivan D Chase, Raphaël Douady, Dianna K Padilla. A comparison of wealth inequality in humans and non-humans. Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2020, 538, pp.122962. ⟨10.1016/j.physa.2019.122962⟩. ⟨hal-03018472⟩