Quantitative History and New Knowledge Revolution: An Overview of Quantitative Studies on the History of Human Inequality.

Quantitative methods were introduced to history research in the late 1950's and the 1960's, but due to the limit of computing power and the lack of historical databases, their use failed to expand into the wider historian community. The computer revolution since the early 1980's has changed all of that. As a result, many long-term historical databases covering different countries and continents in various fields have become available at low costs, leading to a boom in quantitative history research and resulting in a historical knowledge revolution over the past decade or so. This article uses the research on the history of human inequality since antiquity as an example to illustrate how quantitative methods have changed histography. The reviewed studies show that from primitive society to agricultural, industrial, and then modern societies' wealth inequality has significantly increased in each step of the way, but consumption inequality has stayed in a narrow range since the horticultural stage of human development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]