In this article, I present three key facts about income and wealth inequality in the long run emerging from my book Capital in the Twenty-First Century and seek to sharpen and refocus the discussion ...about those trends. In particular, I clarify the role played by r > g in my analysis of wealth inequality. I also discuss some of the implications for optimal taxation, and the relation between capital-income ratios and capital shares.
This article attempts to document and account for the long-run evolution of inheritance. We find that in a country like France the annual flow of inheritance was about 20—25% of national income ...between 1820 and 1910, down to less than 5% in 1950, and back up to about 15% by 2010. A simple theoretical model of wealth accumulation, growth, and inheritance can fully account for the observed U-shaped pattern and levels. Using this model, we find that under plausible assumptions the annual bequest flow might reach about 20—25% of national income by 2050. This corresponds to a capitalized bequest share in total wealth accumulation well above 100%. Our findings illustrate the fact that when the growth rate g is small, and when the rate of return to private wealth r is permanently and substantially larger than the growth rate (say, r = 4—5% versus g = 1—2%), which was the case in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century and is likely to happen again in the twenty-first century, then past wealth and inheritance are bound to play a key role for aggregate wealth accumulation and the structure of lifetime inequality. Contrary to a widespread view, modern economic growth did not kill inheritance.
CAPITAL IS BACK Piketty, Thomas; Zucman, Gabriel
The Quarterly journal of economics,
08/2014, Letnik:
129, Številka:
3
Journal Article
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How do aggregate wealth-to-income ratios evolve in the long run and why? We address this question using 1970–2010 national balance sheets recently compiled in the top eight developed economies. For ...the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and France, we are able to extend our analysis as far back as 1700. We find in every country a gradual rise‘ of wealth-income ratios in recent decades, from about 200–300% in 1970 to 400–600% in 2010. In effect, today’s ratios appear to be returning to the high values observed in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (600–700%). This can be explained by a long-run asset price recovery (itself driven by changes in capital policies since the world wars) and by the slowdown of productivity and population growth, in line with the
β
=
s
g
Harrod-Domar-Solow formula. That is, for a given net saving rate s=10%, the long-run wealth-income ratio β is about 300% if g=3% and 600% if g=1.5%. Our results have implications for capital taxation and regulation and shed new light on the changing nature of wealth, the shape of the production function, and the rise of capital shares.
Inequality in the long run Piketty, Thomas; Saez, Emmanuel
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
05/2014, Letnik:
344, Številka:
6186
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This Review presents basic facts regarding the long-run evolution of income and wealth inequality in Europe and the United States. Income and wealth inequality was very high a century ago, ...particularly in Europe, but dropped dramatically in the first half of the 20th century. Income inequality has surged back in the United States since the 1970s so that the United States is much more unequal than Europe today. We discuss possible interpretations and lessons for the future.
We combine national accounts, surveys, and new tax data to study the accumulation and distribution of income and wealth in China from 1978 to 2015. The national wealth-income ratio increased from 350 ...percent in 1978 to 700 percent in 2015, while the share of public property in national wealth declined from 70 percent to 30 percent. We provide sharp upward revision of official inequality estimates. The top 10 percent income share rose from 27 percent to 41 percent between 1978 and 2015; the bottom 50 percent share dropped from 27 percent to 15 percent. China’s inequality levels used to be close to Nordic countries and are now approaching US levels.
A New York Times Bestseller An NPR Best Book of the Year The epic successor to one of the most important books of the century: at once a retelling of global history, a scathing critique of ...contemporary politics, and a bold proposal for a new and fairer economic system. Thomas Piketty's bestselling Capital in the Twenty-First Century galvanized global debate about inequality. In this audacious follow- up, Piketty challenges us to revolutionize how we think about politics, ideology, and history. He exposes the ideas that have sustained inequality for the past millennium, reveals why the shallow politics of right and left are failing us today, and outlines the structure of a fairer economic system.Our economy, Piketty observes, is not a natural fact. Markets, profits, and capital are all historical constructs that depend on choices. Piketty explores the material and ideological interactions of conflicting social groups that have given us slavery, serfdom, colonialism, communism, and hypercapitalism, shaping the lives of billions. He concludes that the great driver of human progress over the centuries has been the struggle for equality and education and not, as often argued, the assertion of property rights or the pursuit of stability. The new era of extreme inequality that has derailed that progress since the 1980s, he shows, is partly a reaction against communism, but it is also the fruit of ignorance, intellectual specialization, and our drift toward the dead-end politics of identity.Once we understand this, we can begin to envision a more balanced approach to economics and politics. Piketty argues for a new "participatory" socialism, a system founded on an ideology of equality, social property, education, and the sharing of knowledge and power. Capital and Ideology is destined to be one of the indispensable books of our time, a work that will not only help us understand the world, but that will change it.
This paper presents new findings on global inequality dynamics from the World Wealth and Income Database (WID.world), with particular emphasis on the contrast between the trends observed in the ...United States, China, France, and the United Kingdom. We observe rising top income and wealth shares in nearly all countries in recent decades. But the magnitude of the increase varies substantially, thereby suggesting that different country-specific policies and institutions matter considerably. Long-run wealth inequality dynamics appear to be highly unstable. We stress the need for more democratic transparency on income and wealth dynamics and better access to administrative and financial data.
This paper presents new findings from the World Top Incomes Database and discusses some of their policy implications. In particular, the paper provides updated top income series for the United ...States—including new estimates through 2010, showing a strong rebound of the top 1 percent income share, following the 2008-09 sharp fall. It also presents updated income series for other developed countries (including the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Japan) and new series on wealth-income ratios. In light of this extended set of country series, the paper analyzes the relative importance of market and institutional forces in explaining observed cross-country trends, and the likely impact of the Great recession on these long-term evolutions. It discusses the policy implications of the findings, both in terms of optimal tax policy and regarding the interplay between inequality and macroeconomic fragility.
Top Incomes in the Long Run of History Atkinson, Anthony B.; Piketty, Thomas; Saez, Emmanuel
Journal of economic literature,
03/2011, Letnik:
49, Številka:
1
Journal Article
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A recent literature has constructed top income shares time series over the long run for more than twenty countries using income tax statistics. Top incomes represent a small share of the population ...but a very significant share of total income and total taxes paid. Hence, aggregate economic growth per capita and Gini inequality indexes are sensitive to excluding or including top incomes. We discuss the estimation methods and issues that arise when constructing top income share series, including income definition and comparability over time and across countries, tax avoidance, and tax evasion. We provide a summary of the key empirical findings. Most countries experience a dramatic drop in top income shares in the first part of the twentieth century in general due to shocks to top capital incomes during the wars and depression shocks. Top income shares do not recover in the immediate postwar decades. However, over the last thirty years, top income shares have increased substantially in English speaking countries and in India and China but not in continental European countries or Japan. This increase is due in part to an unprecedented surge in top wage incomes. As a result, wage income comprises a larger fraction of top incomes than in the past. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and empirical models that have been proposed to account for the facts and the main questions that remain open.
The empirical starting point for anyone who wants to understand political cleavages in the democratic world, based on a unique dataset covering fifty countries since WWII. Who votes for whom and why? ...Why has growing inequality in many parts of the world not led to renewed class-based conflicts, seeming instead to have come with the emergence of new divides over identity and integration? News analysts, scholars, and citizens interested in exploring those questions inevitably lack relevant data, in particular the kinds of data that establish historical and international context. Political Cleavages and Social Inequalities provides the missing empirical background, collecting and examining a treasure trove of information on the dynamics of polarization in modern democracies.The chapters draw on a unique set of surveys conducted between 1948 and 2020 in fifty countries on five continents, analyzing the links between voters' political preferences and socioeconomic characteristics, such as income, education, wealth, occupation, religion, ethnicity, age, and gender. This analysis sheds new light on how political movements succeed in coalescing multiple interests and identities in contemporary democracies. It also helps us understand the conditions under which conflicts over inequality become politically salient, as well as the similarities and constraints of voters supporting ethnonationalist politicians like Narendra Modi, Jair Bolsonaro, Marine Le Pen, and Donald Trump.Bringing together cutting-edge data and historical analysis, editors Amory Gethin, Clara Martínez-Toledano, and Thomas Piketty offer a vital resource for understanding the voting patterns of the present and the likely sources of future political conflict.
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