Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics
Memorandum,
Oslo University, Department of Economics
No 11/2011: Inequality and growth in the very long run: inferring inequality from data on social groups
Jørgen Modalsli ()
Additional contact information
Jørgen Modalsli: Dept. of Economics, University of Oslo, Postal: Department of Economics, University of Oslo, P.O Box 1095 Blindern, N-0317 Oslo, Norway
Abstract: Income distribution data from before the Industrial Revolution usually comes in the shape of social tables: inventories of a range of social groups and their mean incomes. These are frequently reported without adjusting for within-group income dispersion, leading to a systematic downward bias in the reporting of pre industrial inequality. This paper suggests a correction method, and applies it to an existing collection of twenty-five social tables, from Rome in AD 1 to India in 1947. The corrections, using a variety of assumptions on within-group dispersion, lead to substantial increases in the Gini coefficients. Combining the inequality levels with data on GDP, a robust positive relationship between income inequality and economic growth is confirmed. This supports earlier proposals, based on fewer data points, of a "super Kuznets curve" of increasing inequality over the entire pre-industrial period.
Keywords: Pre-industrial inequality; social tables; Kuznets curve; history
42 pages, April 28, 2011
Full text files
Memo-11-2011.pdf
Questions (including download problems) about the papers in this series should be directed to Mari Strønstad Øverås ()
Report other problems with accessing this service to Sune Karlsson ().
RePEc:hhs:osloec:2011_011This page generated on 2024-09-13 22:16:45.