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Market integration, income inequality, and kinship system among the Mosuo of China

Increased access to defensible material wealth is hypothesised to escalate inequality. Market integration, which creates novel opportunities in cash economies, provides a means of testing this hypothesis. Using demographic data collected from 505 households among the matrilineal and patrilineal Mosu...

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Autores principales: Mattison, Siobhán M., MacLaren, Neil, Sum, Chun-Yi, Mattison, Peter M., Liu, Ruizhe, Shenk, Mary K., Blumenfield, Tami, Su, Mingjie, Li, Hui, Wander, Katherine
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Cambridge University Press 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10426023/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37587931
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2022.52
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author Mattison, Siobhán M.
MacLaren, Neil
Sum, Chun-Yi
Mattison, Peter M.
Liu, Ruizhe
Shenk, Mary K.
Blumenfield, Tami
Su, Mingjie
Li, Hui
Wander, Katherine
author_facet Mattison, Siobhán M.
MacLaren, Neil
Sum, Chun-Yi
Mattison, Peter M.
Liu, Ruizhe
Shenk, Mary K.
Blumenfield, Tami
Su, Mingjie
Li, Hui
Wander, Katherine
author_sort Mattison, Siobhán M.
collection PubMed
description Increased access to defensible material wealth is hypothesised to escalate inequality. Market integration, which creates novel opportunities in cash economies, provides a means of testing this hypothesis. Using demographic data collected from 505 households among the matrilineal and patrilineal Mosuo in 2017, we test whether market integration is associated with increased material wealth, whether increased material wealth is associated with wealth inequality, and whether being in a matrilineal vs. patrilineal kinship system alters the relationship between wealth and inequality. We find evidence that market integration, measured as distance to the nearest source of tourism and primary source of household income, is associated with increased household income and ‘modern’ asset value. Both village-level market integration and mean asset value were associated negatively, rather than positively, with inequality, contrary to predictions. Finally, income, modern wealth and inequality were higher in matrilineal communities that were located closer to the centre of tourism and where tourism has long provided a relatively stable source of income. However, we also observed exacerbated inequality with increasing farm animal value in patriliny. We conclude that the forces affecting wealth and inequality depend on local context and that the importance of local institutions is obscured by aggregate statistics drawn from modern nation states.
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spelling pubmed-104260232023-08-16 Market integration, income inequality, and kinship system among the Mosuo of China Mattison, Siobhán M. MacLaren, Neil Sum, Chun-Yi Mattison, Peter M. Liu, Ruizhe Shenk, Mary K. Blumenfield, Tami Su, Mingjie Li, Hui Wander, Katherine Evol Hum Sci Research Article Increased access to defensible material wealth is hypothesised to escalate inequality. Market integration, which creates novel opportunities in cash economies, provides a means of testing this hypothesis. Using demographic data collected from 505 households among the matrilineal and patrilineal Mosuo in 2017, we test whether market integration is associated with increased material wealth, whether increased material wealth is associated with wealth inequality, and whether being in a matrilineal vs. patrilineal kinship system alters the relationship between wealth and inequality. We find evidence that market integration, measured as distance to the nearest source of tourism and primary source of household income, is associated with increased household income and ‘modern’ asset value. Both village-level market integration and mean asset value were associated negatively, rather than positively, with inequality, contrary to predictions. Finally, income, modern wealth and inequality were higher in matrilineal communities that were located closer to the centre of tourism and where tourism has long provided a relatively stable source of income. However, we also observed exacerbated inequality with increasing farm animal value in patriliny. We conclude that the forces affecting wealth and inequality depend on local context and that the importance of local institutions is obscured by aggregate statistics drawn from modern nation states. Cambridge University Press 2022-11-21 /pmc/articles/PMC10426023/ /pubmed/37587931 http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2022.52 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Mattison, Siobhán M.
MacLaren, Neil
Sum, Chun-Yi
Mattison, Peter M.
Liu, Ruizhe
Shenk, Mary K.
Blumenfield, Tami
Su, Mingjie
Li, Hui
Wander, Katherine
Market integration, income inequality, and kinship system among the Mosuo of China
title Market integration, income inequality, and kinship system among the Mosuo of China
title_full Market integration, income inequality, and kinship system among the Mosuo of China
title_fullStr Market integration, income inequality, and kinship system among the Mosuo of China
title_full_unstemmed Market integration, income inequality, and kinship system among the Mosuo of China
title_short Market integration, income inequality, and kinship system among the Mosuo of China
title_sort market integration, income inequality, and kinship system among the mosuo of china
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10426023/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37587931
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2022.52
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