Must-Read: Guido Alfani: Europe’s Rich since 1300

Must-Read: Guido Alfani: Europe’s Rich since 1300: “Throughout this time, the only significant declines in inequality were the result of the Black Death and the World Wars…

…EINITE http://www.dondena.unibocconi.it/EINITE… has collected, systematically and with a uniform methodology, information about long-term trends in wealth inequality, and in the share of the richest, for many ancient Italian states as well as for a few other areas of Europe… from around 1300 to 1800…. Figure 1 shows the share of wealth of the top 10% between 1300 and 2010, using Piketty (2014) for the post-1800 period…. Remarkably, Piketty’s series for 1810-1910 shows the share of the richest growing at almost exactly the same pace as the I calculated for the series between 1550 and 1800….

In the seven centuries… we find only two phases of significant inequality decline. Both were triggered by catastrophic events: The Black Death…. Shocks occurred between 1915 and 1945 related to the two World Wars, as argued by Piketty 2014, pp. 368-370)…. The share of the richest 10% today is about the same as that in Europe (or at least, Italy) immediately before the Black Death…. The long-term perspective of recent research requires us to move beyond the characterisation of inequality time dynamics provided by Kuznets….

During the early modern period (from around 1600) the prevalence of the rich grew almost continuously until the onset of the Industrial Revolution. The rich made up no more than 5% of the overall population during the Middle Ages and the first part of the early modern period…