🌅 Aging Societies Are More Vulnerable to Collapse

SOURCE

Scheffer et al. (2023)

WHAT TO KNOW

• Researchers analyzed longevity in 324 pre-modern states across five millennia, finding societies faced a growing risk of termination within the first two centuries after formation before the risk leveled off. After the risk fell, some states were able to persist much longer than usual, including ancient Chinese states and dynasties that had an upper limit of around 300 years of existence over the past two millennia.

WHY IT MATTERS

• Various mechanisms contributed to societal collapse throughout history, like environmental degradation, growing population numbers leading to resource scarcity, and disease risk in crowded settings. Perhaps most notably, the team also found “a tendency for wealth to fall increasingly into the hands of a small elite, causing a rising gulf between elites and the rest.” The gulf can lead to heightened corruption and worse political decision-making, exacerbating social problems like interpersonal violence and civil unrest.

CONNECT THE DOTS

• The researchers found the pattern of increasing vulnerability to collapse as ancient societies aged was consistent across pre-modern states in Europe, China, and the Americas. Despite today’s advanced technology and highly interconnected globalized system, the authors believe modern societies with the same problems may be similarly vulnerable to the mechanisms that drove societal collapse in the ancient world.