IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bci/wpaper/2401.html

Wars, Depression, and Fascism: Income Inequality in Italy, 1900-1950

Author

Listed:
  • Maria Gomez Leon

    (Universitat de Valencia)

  • Giacomo Gabbuti

    (Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Istituto di Economia)

Abstract

This paper presents yearly estimates of income inequality in Italy from 1900 to 1950. By constructing dynamic social tables, we comprehensively assess inequality across all components of Italian society and compare Italy with Britain, Germany, and Spain over the same period. In a context of declining inequality across Europe, interwar Italy reveals a trajectory at odds with the narratives on the interwar period: a strong increase of inequality during WWI, markedly reversed during 1918-1922, resumed after the March on Rome, and reaching new peaks during WWII. Indeed, while allowing us to reveal sizeable short-term distributive shocks in Italy and to discuss the political economy of fascist Italy, our results consolidate the reinterpretation of inequality trends in interwar Europe and the regressive nature of fascist regimes.

Suggested Citation

  • Maria Gomez Leon & Giacomo Gabbuti, 2024. "Wars, Depression, and Fascism: Income Inequality in Italy, 1900-1950," Documentos de Trabajo EH-Valencia (DT-EHV) 2401, Economic History group at the Universitat de Valencia.
    • Handle: RePEc:bci:wpaper:2401
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ehvalencia.es/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/DT_EHV_2024_01.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Nikolić, Stefan & Novokmet, Filip & Larysz, Piotr Paweł, 2024. "Income inequality in Eastern Europe: Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia in the twentieth century," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • E25 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Aggregate Factor Income Distribution
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • N34 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Europe: 1913-

    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:bci:wpaper:2401. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Alfonso Diez Minguela (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.ehvalencia.es .

    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.