Renaissance Grrrl

Posted by Frank Jacobs

https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/china-more-unequal-than-rome/

For about 250 years at the beginning of our era, two ancient superpowers coexisted at opposite ends of the vast Eurasian land mass. The Roman Empire and China’s Han Dynasty were too far apart to be in direct contact, but they did know of each other. The Romans called China Seres, the mysterious land where silk came from. The Chinese had vague notions of Daqin, a mighty empire way out west.

Alien culture, familiar system

If a traveler from either empire had followed the Silk Road all the way to the other, they would have found a profoundly alien culture — but also a system of government with a more than passing resemblance to their own.

Both empires were led by a god-like figurehead and administered from the capital city by a cadre of bureaucrats who extracted taxes from their far-flung provinces. That revenue was used to build road networks and other public infrastructure, to finance a professional army that kept the barbarians beyond the borders at bay, and to reward the elite that ran the empire.

Even size-wise, they were remarkably similar. At their peak, each ruled over a territory of about 1.5 million square miles (4 million km²) and a population of 60 to 70 million.

But comparison also invites contrast, and none has been as granular as a recent study that reveals the levels of income inequality within and between both empires. It turns out that the Roman Empire, while certainly no socialist utopia, was much more equal than China under the Han Dynasty.

Analyzing inequality in Rome and China

The researchers, from Università Bocconi in Milan, Cambridge University in the UK, and Stanford University in California, suggest that the greater levels of income inequality led to instability and eventually the downfall of the Han, whereas the (relative) equality among Roman citizens was a contributing factor to the centuries-long Pax Romana.

In an article published in Nature Communications, they offer the most detailed analysis to date of economic inequality in both empires at the height of their respective Golden Ages: circa 165 AD for Rome, and around 2 AD for Han China.

Some key statistics:

• In the Han Empire, the richest 1% earned 26% of the total income. Expand that to the richest 5%, and the share of total income grows to 42%. The poorest 50%, in contrast, earned just 24% of the total income.
• Things were less extreme in the Roman Empire, at least at the higher end of the scale. There, the richest 1% earned 19% of total income, and the top 5% earned 37%. The bottom 50%, however, earned 25% — virtually the same as in China.
• Not only was Han China more unequal than Rome, but the average income was also much lower. In the Roman Empire, the average income was 2.25 times the subsistence minimum, whereas in Han China, it was just 1.88.
• Economic inequality can be expressed in the so-called Gini coefficient, where 0 means perfect equality and 1 is perfect inequality. Ancient Rome scored 0.46, and ancient China scored 0.48.
• Another measure of inequality is the extraction ratio: how much the elite are wringing out of the economy relative to the maximum possible (i.e., without pushing the poor from subsistence into destitution). That ratio is high for both empires, but there is a significant difference. In Rome, it was 69%. In Han China, 80%.

Some modern equivalents:

• Rome’s average income translates to roughly $900 per month per person today, while China’s would be about $750.
• The Gini coefficient for the U.S. today is around 0.41 — slightly more equal than ancient Rome. China currently has a Gini coefficient of around 0.37; the UK and Germany are at 0.32.

More unequal, despite Confucian ideals and progressive taxes

The results of this study contradict a common perception: that China’s Confucian ideals of social harmony served to temper inequality. Supporting evidence for that presupposition is the fact that the Chinese fiscal system seems more uniform and advanced than any other at that time. A standard land tax was enforced across the empire, and other taxes were actually progressive, with wealthier merchants paying double the poll tax rate and five times the property rate of a free peasant.

And yet, Han China was more unequal than Rome. Several other factors explain why.

First, Rome practiced what can be called “decentralized inclusivity”: It co-opted local elites to run the provinces, allowing for some wealth to accumulate and remain outside of the imperial capital. In contrast, Han China viewed its local elites with suspicion, forcing many to move to Sili, the capital province (containing the capital cities of Chang’an and Luoyang). The aim was to control potential rebels, but the unintended effect was to skew the balance of wealth further in favor of the center, at the expense of the periphery.

A second equalizing factor in Rome was military spending, which was higher compared to China and flowed largely to the legions garrisoned in the frontier provinces. Counterintuitively, China’s smaller military budget — possibly the result of fewer external threats — meant more regional economic inequality.

Third, Rome’s economic system had some diversifying mechanisms that China’s lacked. While it is true that, like its Chinese counterparts, the Roman landowning elite hoarded power and wealth, the Roman Empire also had higher levels of trade and larger cities, creating a wealthy merchant class and well-to-do urban middle classes. The Chinese economy was more centralized, tightly controlled by the Emperor and his bureaucracy, who collected more taxes from their subjects than their Roman counterparts.

Both ancient Rome and Han China were shockingly corrupt

It should be remembered that the differences in inequality between Rome and China were differences in degree, not in kind. Both empires were shockingly corrupt, and political power was openly used to accumulate wealth.

In Rome, senators and governors enriched themselves through conquest, extortion, and bribes. Warlords like Pompey and Caesar returned from their campaigns with fortunes the equivalent of billions of today’s dollars. In Han China, officials leveraged the power of their modestly paid roles into enormous fortunes. The most powerful families were granted so-called fiefs: a group of taxpaying households. The tax income could run into millions of coins each year.

But with great wealth came great danger. Individuals and families that accumulated too much power for the Emperor’s comfort risked falling victim to “predatory redistribution”: They were purged, and their wealth was redistributed to their rivals. In China, entire clans could fall out of favor overnight. In Rome, to be a powerful senator could be a death sentence.

The study authors argue that greater inequality can lead to increasing political instability, and eventually even the collapse of a regime. The driver here is not so much the infighting at the top as the anger and resentment that builds up at the base of the economic pyramid.

Previous work by one of the researchers involved in this study shows that the extraction rate for the Aztec Empire circa 1492 AD was even worse than in Han China: 89%. That probably explains why many of the people subjected to Aztec rule sided with the Spanish conquistadores when they arrived.

The uprising of the Red Eyebrows

In the case of Han China, extreme wealth extraction from the provinces may have fatally reduced the economic resilience and political loyalty of large swathes of the empire. Shortly after this economic snapshot, taken in 2 AD, rebellion and famine stalked the land. The regime collapsed, and a short-lived rival dynasty took over, before succumbing to a peasant uprising known as the Red Eyebrows.

In contrast, Rome enjoyed a 200-year Pax Romana, from the accession of Augustus, the first Emperor, in 27 BC to the death of Marcus Aurelius, the last of the “Five Good Emperors,” in 180 AD.

It is tempting to draw modern-day conclusions from this historical analysis. If elite capture of political institutions increases inequality, and if rising inequality leads to political instability, then perhaps the Pax Americana — the long peace we have known since 1945 as part of a U.S.-led world order — may not have a long future.

According to the latest data from the Federal Reserve, in Q3 2024, the richest 1% of U.S. households owned 31% of the nation’s wealth while the bottom 50% owned no more than 2% — a much thinner slice than their counterparts in ancient Rome and China. Still, one could argue that it’s comparatively larger, because the pie is so much bigger now than it was 2,000 ago.

Read the entire article: Guido Alfani et al, A comparison of income inequality in the Roman and Chinese Han empires, Nature Communications (2025).

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