A Golden Age for All? Income Inequality and Social Classes in Italy, 1951-1973

Giacomo Gabbuti and Edoardo Rappa

LEM Papers Series from Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy

Abstract: This paper presents the first reconstruction of income inequality in Italy during the so-called 'Golden Age', by building Dynamic Social Tables (DSTs) from 1951 to 1973. The resulting estimates show increasing income inequality between 1951 and 1961 -that is, during the so-called "Economic Miracle". Then, with unemployment reaching its lowest recorded level, the first strikes in the metalmaking sector and a sudden recession led to a stagnation in inequality. While withinlabour inequality steadily declined after 1966, overall inequality reached a peak in 1969, to decline towards the levels recorded by household surveys by early-1970s. This 'Kuznetsian', inverted-U dynamics in the period of most sustained structural change of Italian history should, however, better be understood in the light of socio-political and institutional developments. Somehow at odds with prevailing narratives, we also find an increase from 1961 in the share of income accrued by Italian working women.

Keywords: Inequality; Italian Economic History; Economic Miracle; Golden Age; Gender Gaps (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-04-08
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.lem.sssup.it/WPLem/files/2026-11.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:ssa:lemwps:2026/11

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LEM Papers Series from Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().