Fun thing to study and read about. The differences are quite small though. Wouldn't the error bars dwarf the differences? I'd assume you could tweak various assumptions and easily arrive at another conclusion.

I know that the Romans were good at record keeping for their time. But I understand the best population estimates for the Roman empire are based on economic metrics like agricultural modeling which in turn must make assumptions about wealth distribution. As for the Han, I don't think they've left us a complete census either.

To quote "How Many People? Ancient Demography" [0]:

> We generally estimate uncounted women, children and elderly males by using demographic modeling based on model life tables – data tables which project mortality simulations based on real-world populations. But how do you know what tables to use? The answer here has typically been that you comb the evidence you have (grave inscriptions, fragmentary census records that survive in Egypt) to create a statistical snapshot of your population and then try to match that, as best you can, to one of the extant models that ‘best fits.’ [...]

> That leaves the question of how many enslaved persons and those too poor to be counted in some of our figures.

[0] https://acoup.blog/2023/12/22/collections-how-many-people-an...

Is there some assumption here that inequality is bad? Or that there's some ideal number? Or that there's a meaningful comparison with modern economies?

I see "inequality" as a concept like "uncertainty", it can be pointed to as the source of social and economic issues, but only is undesirable that rain is seen as undesirable weather. Nobody likes being on the wrong end of these, but they are inevitable and natural (to some extent) and I think we're better off trying to acheive a society that works with an equilibrium wealth distribution. Umbrellas rather than weather control machines.

In the first two maps, there seems to be little difference between income per capita and income inequality: the regions with greater per capita income also show greater inequality. Is this because some people always end up at zero no matter the region, so that increasing per capita income from X (lower) to Y (higher) stretches the ranges of income from zero to Y and thus increases disparity?

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Empire start declining when empire interest payment on its debt start exceeding its military budget