Measuring long-run wealth inequality. Empirical results for Norway 1912-2019

This paper introduces a framework for estimating long-run series of measures of overall inequality and top wealth shares when data consist of a combination of historical tabulations and modern administrative registers of taxable wealth. The proposed framework is applicable when historical wealth tabulations as a minimum provide information on bracket boundaries and the proportion of tax units for each of the wealth brackets. The framework has been used to produce evidence on wealth inequality in Norway from 1912 to 2019. The empirical results show that wealth inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient was very high at the beginning of the twentieth century, fell during the post-war period and has increased substantially since the 1980s. The rise in wealth inequality over the recent four decades is driven by a rise in the wealth share of the top 1 per cent, while equalization among the bottom 99 per cent accounted for 70 percent of the reduction in wealth inequality from the early 1950s to the late 1960s.