Top Incomes, Income and Wealth Inequality in the Netherlands: The first 100 Years 1914-2014 -what's next?

In 2001 Tony very kindly agreed that we would work together on the top income shares for our two countries, the Netherlands and the UK. I profited enormously from his experience with top incomes and, naturally, with the UK, and, surprisingly, also with my own country. He could actually read Dutch and had much easier access to the pre-war Dutch statistics than I had. He joked about non-existent privacy concerns in the statistics of those days as that highest class of incomes counted one observation only – Tony imagined that would be Henri Deterding, chairman of Royal Dutch Shell up to 1937. I treasure the moments we sat together at Nuffield for work, at the high table, or, equally nicely, in a pub for a beer. With his guidance we successfully laid the basis for the first 85 years (1914-1999), on which I have built for a summary update of Dutch top incomes to the year 2012 (Salverda, 2013) and on which I base myself for the present paper's more extensive update to 2014. Tony has seen most of the new material (compare the Graphs section below) in July 2016 and responded, even on holiday, with some suggestions and questions. He liked chart books, well this is one. It is really very sad that we have not been able to finish this together. He liked the ‘100 years' completion of the series, and anyone who knew him would have wished him a century in good health.