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Wealth Concentration over the Path of Development: Sweden 1873–2005

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Abstract

We study the development of wealth concentration in Sweden over 130 years, from the begin-ning of industrialization until present day. Our series are based on a wide array of new evi-dence from estate- and wealth tax data, estimates of foreign and domestic family firm-wealth and of pension and social security wealth. We find that the Swedish wealth concentration was at a historically high level in the agrarian state and that it did not change much during early in-dustrialization. From World War I up until about 1950, the richest percentile lost ground to the rest of the top wealth decile where relatively income rich households accumulated new wealth. In the postwar period, the entire top decile lost out relative to the rest of the population, much due to the spread of owner-occupied housing. Around 1980, wealth compression stopped and inequality increased. We introduce new ways of approximating the effects of international flows and find that the recent increase in Swedish wealth inequality is likely to be larger than what official estimates suggest.

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  • Roine, Jesper & Waldenström, Daniel, 2007. "Wealth Concentration over the Path of Development: Sweden 1873–2005," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 677, Stockholm School of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:hastef:0677
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    Cited by:

    1. Gabriel Zucman, 2013. "The Missing Wealth of Nations: Are Europe and the U.S. net Debtors or net Creditors?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 128(3), pages 1321-1364.
    2. Jérôme Bourdieu & Marta Menéndez & Gilles Postel-Vinay & Akiko Suwa-Eisenmann, 2008. "Where have (almost) all the wealthy gone? Spatial decomposition of wealth trends in France, 1820-1939," Review of Agricultural and Environmental Studies - Revue d'Etudes en Agriculture et Environnement, INRA Department of Economics, vol. 87(2), pages 5-25.
    3. Pedro Carvalho Jr. & Luana Passos, 2018. "Tax on Large Fortunes: the recent international debate and the situation in Brazil," Working Papers 166, International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth.
    4. repec:clr:wugarc:y:2012:v:38i:4p:715 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Manuel Melzer, 2012. "Die Verteilung von Vermögen," Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft - WuG, Kammer für Arbeiter und Angestellte für Wien, Abteilung Wirtschaftswissenschaft und Statistik, vol. 38(4), pages 715-747.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Wealth concentration; Wealth distribution; Inequality; Income distribution; Sweden; Welfare state; Pension wealth; Augmented wealth;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • N33 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Europe: Pre-1913
    • N34 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Europe: 1913-

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