There is no consensus, simply because when you try to find reasons why a nation succeeds or fail, you eventualy end up putting a hierarchy, or a blame. No one wants to take the blame, no one wants to be at the wrong part of the hierarchy of "good Nations". Hence the relative success of the geographical argument, that does none of this, since geography and climate aren't the result of any specific group's actions. An argument which was completely destroyed in a fascinating and absolutely fundamental (relatively new) work about this subject : Why Nations Fail.

The study first debunks geographic and localisation arguments, explores specific historical dynamics and overall does a brilliant account of the current literature on the subject. Then, it studies what colonialism did to the world. Colonialism, according to Acemoglu, was about bringing wealth from the periphery to the mother nation : there never was, at any single point in time, a will from the "mother nations" (ie colonizing nations) to build anything close to a state in these colonized territories. When independances started happening (starting in Brazil if I recall correctly), you progressively had more and more countries that appeared and could only use what was basically a leftover colonial administration with the sole purpose of resource extraction as its main state bureaucracy, as it was what was left over by the colonizers as they were kicked out. Many of these countries still have this exctractive logic, in the form of "predator states", or dictatorships, since institutionalism is highly dependent on its origin (see the theory of path dependence).

Overall, it's a fantastic work and a perfect summary of the current debate.

However, you could argue that it is still a perspective. Intepretating the past is an inexact science: you can never, ever find the right answer. There are some factors that do seem to favor inequality though, like political instability and agrarian economy : this book adds this great theory of colonial extraction.