House size and economic growth : regional trajectories in the Roman world - Stephan, Robert Perry; Trimble, Jennifer, 1965-; Morris, Ian; Robertson, Ian; Scheidel, Walter, 1966-; Stanford University, Department of Classics (2013)
This study takes a broad, comparative approach to assessing the Roman empire's impact on the economic well-being of its populations. The project focuses on three main questions. First, how did the Roman empire affect economic prosperity? Second, how did the distribution of wealth change over time? Third, how did Roman rule affect the level of inequality across society? In order to answer these questions on an intensive, or per capita, level, I track changes in the distribution of house sizes over time. Results indicate that although the Roman occupation of Britain was accompanied by a dramatic increase in median house size (> 80%), house size trends in regions with higher pre-imperial levels of social development were completely contingent on our definition of what constituted a "house." If we look only at traditional atrium/peristyle houses, then Italy and North Africa also exhibit significant growth (> 50% growth in median house size). If, however, we also include apartments, street-front shops, and tabernae as having domestic functions, Italy and North Africa actually decline in terms of median house size. Quantile comparisons suggest that in each of the three regions, the further one moves up the socioeconomic spectrum, the more that segment of the population relatively benefited in the Roman period. The rich do appear to have become richer as a result of the Roman empire. The rise in the Gini coefficients derived from house size distributions suggests that societal inequality also rose in all three regions during the period of Roman occupation regardless of our definition of the ancient house. The overall importance of this project lies in its ability to quantify the economic effects that the Roman empire on a per capita level, while at the same time serving as a case study for how large socio-political structures affect economic prosperity of individuals.
Submitted to the Department of Classics.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2013.
Rights: (c) Copyright 2013 by Robert Perry Stephan
Rights: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Keywords: theses