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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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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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