Abstract
Knowing what happens over time to the lifeways of people in contemporary small-scale non-industrial societies of the rural Global South matters because it helps assess changes in the quality of life of an underrepresented group. It has been difficult to answer the question because longitudinal information is rarely collected in such settings. A longitudinal dataset (2002-2010) from a horticultural-foraging society of Indigenous People in the Bolivian Amazon (Tsimane’) is used to analyze trends in indicators of well-being and economic inequalities. We selected 13 Tsimane’ villages (from ~100) that varied in proximity to town and surveyed all households in each village. ~240 households were followed yearly to estimate trends of 21 outcomes (e.g., income, sociality, macronutrients). For each economic outcome, annual and all-years-combined Gini coefficients were estimated for the entire sample across the 13 villages. We show a rise in total asset wealth, a change in asset composition (less traditional wealth, more commercial wealth), higher monetary value of foods eaten, and better-perceived health, but a decline in caloric and protein consumption and no marked gender differentials in objective or hedonic measures of well-being. Economic inequalities were non-trivial and varied widely between years; asset inequality varied less than income inequality. We document the value of longitudinal, locally-grounded indexes of well-being to obtain a granular view of changes in well-being and the possible use of inequality in calories and consumption of macronutrients as a valid proxy for income inequality in places with tenuous links to the market economy.