Regional income inequality in France : what does history teach us?

This paper studies regional income inequality in France since mid-nineteenth century. Given the dominant role played by Île-de-France and the city of Paris, which inspired the publication of “Paris et le désert française” (Gravier, 1947) and a debate on regional development in the aftermath of World War II, France seems an ideal scenario to examine the dynamics of regional income. In doing so, we first document the existing evidence before and after the development of national accounting. Using different approaches, several studies have produced regional (département, NUTS3) Gross Domestic Product (GDP) estimates from 1840 to 1930. Thus, our first contribution is to present these findings, assess the appropriateness of each methodology, and address potential concerns. The comparison of existing estimates for 1861-1930 raises some doubts about the pattern of regional inequality followed since 1861 to 1911. Hence we present new estimates for 1860-1930 based in the Geary and Stark (2002) method. In short, our estimates sum up new evidence in favour of an incessant decline in regional inequality since mid 19th up to 1930 and turn down the hypothesis of a potential U-shaped pattern in France since mid 19th century to nowadays. Additionally, we found that the use of nominal relative wages could overestimate the level or regional income inequality.