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A Safe Harbor: Wealth-Income Ratios in Switzerland over the 20th Century and the Role of Housing Prices

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Abstract

We estimate the ratio of private wealth to national income, βpt, for Switzerland over the period 1900–2018. Our results indicate that the development of βpt in Switzerland did not follow a U-shaped pattern as in most European countries, but that the evolution was extraordinarily stable, with βpt oscillating around 500% over most of the 20th century. However, the wealth-income ratio has been on the rise since the turn of the century to reach 721% in 2017 – an unprecedented level in the past. This considerable increase is mainly driven by large capital gains in housing wealth since 2010. We present new cross-country evidence that capital gains in housing wealth have become an important driver of rising wealth-income ratios in a series of developed economies.

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  • Enea Baselgia & Isabel Z. Martínez, 2020. "A Safe Harbor: Wealth-Income Ratios in Switzerland over the 20th Century and the Role of Housing Prices," KOF Working papers 20-487, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich.
    • Handle: RePEc:kof:wpskof:20-487
    DOI: 10.3929/ethz-b-000458727
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    1. David Gallusser & Matthias Krapf, 2022. "Joint Income-Wealth Inequality: Evidence from Lucerne Tax Data," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 163(1), pages 251-295, August.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    wealth-income ratio; income distribution; economic growth; housing prices;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • N34 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Europe: 1913-
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D33 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Factor Income Distribution
    • E01 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General - - - Measurement and Data on National Income and Product Accounts and Wealth; Environmental Accounts

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