Wealth Concentration over the Path of Development: Sweden, 1873–2006*

Jesper Roine () and Daniel Waldenström

Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 2009, vol. 111, issue 1, 151-187

Abstract: We study wealth concentration in Sweden over 130 years, from the beginning of industrialization until the present day. Our series are based on new evidence from estate and wealth tax data, foreign and domestic family firm‐wealth, and pension wealth estimates. We find that Swedish wealth concentration was high in the agrarian state, and changed little during early industrialization. From World War I until about 1950, the richest percentile lost ground to high‐income earners in the rest of the top‐wealth decile. This equalization continued postwar; the entire top decile lost‐out relative to the rest of the population. Around 1980, wealth compression stopped and inequality increased. We approximate the effects of international flows and find that the recent increase in wealth inequality is probably larger than what official estimates suggest.

Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (127)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9442.2008.01558.x

Related works:
Working Paper: Wealth Concentration over the Path of Development: Sweden, 1873–2006 (2008)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:scandj:v:111:y:2009:i:1:p:151-187

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0347-0520

Access Statistics for this article

Scandinavian Journal of Economics is currently edited by Richard Friberg, Matti Liski and Kjetil Storesletten

More articles in Scandinavian Journal of Economics from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().