"All human societies, from prehistory through to today, have been characterized by some degree of economic inequality. Arguably, complex societies would not have thrived if they had been unable to concentrate and redistribute resources effectively. We frequently talk about the top 5% or 1% today...

During the demographic transition that in Europe tended to take place from the early 19th to the end of the 20th century, the population in European countries and its overseas offshoots increased by a factor of five or less, which is low compared to the increase now taking place in most other...

Earlier research on poverty failed to provide us with consistent measures of its prevalence across space and time. This is due to the limitations of the available sources and to the difficulty of applying to them the poverty definitions of modern social science. This article discusses different...