IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rdg/jhdxdp/jhd-dp2018-07.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Comfortable, the Rich, and the Super-rich. What Really Happened to Top British Incomes During the First Half of the Twentieth Century?

Author

Listed:
  • Peter Scott

    (Henley Business School, University of Reading)

  • James Walker

    (Henley Business School, University of Reading)

Abstract

We examine shifts in British income inequality and their causes between 1911 and 1949. Newly re-discovered Inland Revenue 1911 estimates and more detailed data from subsequent official income distribution enquiries are used to show that income was substantially more concentrated at the top of the income distribution in 1911 than previous estimates suggest, and that the top 1 per cent were the principal 'losers' in the subsequent trend towards reduced income inequality. We find that this trend reflected a sharp decline in top 'unearned' incomes - paralleling the findings of Piketty and Saez for France and the USA. This explains the paradox between the observed reduction in British income inequality and the lack of evidence for any substantial redistribution of income between salary and wage-earners.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Scott & James Walker, 2018. "The Comfortable, the Rich, and the Super-rich. What Really Happened to Top British Incomes During the First Half of the Twentieth Century?," John H Dunning Centre for International Business Discussion Papers jhd-dp2018-07, Henley Business School, University of Reading.
    • Handle: RePEc:rdg:jhdxdp:jhd-dp2018-07
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://assets.henley.ac.uk/defaultUploads/PDFs/research/papers-publications/JHD-2018-07_Scott-and-Walker-v4.pdf?mtime=20181108114830&_ga=2.42834598.2018586361.1542108899-444059195.1517222693
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bengtsson, Erik & Waldenström, Daniel, 2018. "Capital Shares and Income Inequality: Evidence from the Long Run," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 78(3), pages 712-743, September.
    2. Daniel R. Feenberg & James M. Poterba, 1993. "Income Inequality and the Incomes of Very High-Income Taxpayers: Evidence from Tax Returns," NBER Chapters, in: Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 7, pages 145-177, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Anthony Atkinson & Thomas Piketty, 2010. "Top Incomes : A Global Perspective," PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) halshs-00754875, HAL.
    4. James M. Poterba, 1993. "Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 7," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number pote93-1.
    5. Lee Soltow, 1968. "Long-Run Changes in British Income Inequality," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 21(1), pages 17-29, April.
    6. Lindert, Peter H., 2000. "Three centuries of inequality in Britain and America," Handbook of Income Distribution, in: A.B. Atkinson & F. Bourguignon (ed.), Handbook of Income Distribution, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 3, pages 167-216, Elsevier.
    7. Atkinson, A. B. & Piketty, Thomas (ed.), 2010. "Top Incomes: A Global Perspective," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199286898.
    8. A. B. Atkinson, 2005. "Top incomes in the UK over the 20th century," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 168(2), pages 325-343, March.
    9. James M. Poterba (ed.), 1993. "Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 7," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262660814, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Vincent Geloso & Peter Lindert, 2020. "Relative costs of living, for richer and poorer, 1688–1914," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 14(3), pages 417-442, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Anthony B. Atkinson & Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2011. "Top Incomes in the Long Run of History," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(1), pages 3-71, March.
    2. Emmanuel Saez & Joel Slemrod & Seth H. Giertz, 2012. "The Elasticity of Taxable Income with Respect to Marginal Tax Rates: A Critical Review," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 50(1), pages 3-50, March.
    3. Richard Burkhauser & Shuaizhang Feng & Stephen Jenkins & Jeff Larrimore, 2011. "Estimating trends in US income inequality using the Current Population Survey: the importance of controlling for censoring," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 9(3), pages 393-415, September.
    4. Filip Novokmet, 2018. "The long-run evolution of inequality in the Czech Lands, 1898-2015," PSE Working Papers hal-02878212, HAL.
    5. Ramón E. López & Eugenio Figueroa B. & Pablo Gutiérrez C., 2016. "Fundamental accrued capital gains and the measurement of top incomes: an application to Chile," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 14(4), pages 379-394, December.
    6. Tony Atkinson, 2002. "Top Incomes in the United Kingdom Over the Twentieth Century," Oxford Economic and Social History Working Papers _043, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    7. Jin Seo Cho & Myung-Ho Park & Peter C. B. Phillips, 2018. "Practical Kolmogorov–Smirnov Testing by Minimum Distance Applied to Measure Top Income Shares in Korea," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(3), pages 523-537, July.
    8. Kleven, Henrik J. & Luttmer, Erzo F.P., 2018. "A special issue of the Journal of Public Economics: Honoring the work of Sir Anthony B. Atkinson (1944–2017)," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 1-3.
    9. Bartels, Charlotte & Waldenström, Daniel, 2021. "Inequality and top incomes," GLO Discussion Paper Series 959, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    10. Raymundo M. Campos-Vazquez & Emmanuel Chavez & Gerardo Esquivel, 2017. "Growth is (really) good for the (really) rich," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(12), pages 2639-2675, December.
    11. Filip Novokmet, 2018. "The long-run evolution of inequality in the Czech Lands, 1898-2015," World Inequality Lab Working Papers hal-02878212, HAL.
    12. Richard Burkhauser & Markus Hahn & Roger Wilkins, 2015. "Measuring top incomes using tax record data: a cautionary tale from Australia," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 13(2), pages 181-205, June.
    13. Filip Novokmet, 2018. "The long-run evolution of inequality in the Czech Lands, 1898-2015," Working Papers hal-02878212, HAL.
    14. Bartels, Charlotte, 2019. "Top Incomes in Germany, 1871–2014," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 79(3), pages 669-707, September.
    15. Aaberge, Rolf & Atkinson, Anthony B. & Modalsli, Jørgen, 2020. "Estimating long-run income inequality from mixed tabular data: Empirical evidence from Norway, 1875–2017," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 187(C).
    16. Alvaredo, Facundo & Cogneau, Denis & Piketty, Thomas, 2021. "Income inequality under colonial rule. Evidence from French Algeria, Cameroon, Tunisia, and Vietnam and comparisons with British colonies 1920–1960," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    17. Hernan Winkler, 2019. "The effect of income inequality on political polarization: Evidence from European regions, 2002–2014," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(2), pages 137-162, July.
    18. Yin-Chi Wang & Ping Wang & Chong Yip & Pei-Ju Liao, 2017. "Educational Choice, Rural-urban Migration and Economic Development: The Role of Zhaosheng in China," 2017 Meeting Papers 738, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    19. Joel Slemrod, 1996. "High-Income Families and the Tax Changes of the 1980s: The Anatomy of Behavioral Response," NBER Chapters, in: Empirical Foundations of Household Taxation, pages 169-192, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. A. B. Atkinson & J. E. Søgaard, 2013. "The long-run history of income inequality in Denmark: Top incomes from 1870 to 2010," EPRU Working Paper Series 2013-01, Economic Policy Research Unit (EPRU), University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Income inequality; United Kingdom;

    JEL classification:

    • H26 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Tax Evasion and Avoidance
    • H87 - Public Economics - - Miscellaneous Issues - - - International Fiscal Issues; International Public Goods
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rdg:jhdxdp:jhd-dp2018-07. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Marie Pearson (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bsrdguk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.