 Wealth and Income Inequality in the Long Run of HistoryA chapter in Handbook of Cliometrics, 2024, pp 1807-1835 from Springer Abstract: Abstract This chapter provides an overview of current knowledge about economic inequality, of both income and wealth, in the very long run of history focusing on Western Europe and North America. While most of the data provided by recent research cover the period from the late Middle Ages until today, some insights are also possible into even earlier epochs. Based on these recent findings, economic inequality seems to have been growing over centuries, with phases of clear and marked inequality reduction being relatively rare and usually associated with catastrophic events, such as the Black Death during the fifteenth century or the World Wars in the twentieth. Traditional explanations of long-term inequality growth are found to be unsatisfying, and a range of other possible causal factors are explored (demographic, social-economic, and institutional). Placing today’s situation in a very long-run perspective not only leads us to question old assumptions about the future of inequality (think of current criticism of Kuznets’s hypotheses) but also changes how we perceive inequality in the modern world. Keywords: Wealth inequality; Income inequality; Distribution; Long run; Western history (search for similar items in EconPapers) There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-031-35583-7_29 Ordering information: This item can be ordered from DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-35583-7_29 Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in Springer Books from Springer |
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