Where Is the Middle Class? Inequality, Gender and the Shape of the Upper Tail from 60 Million English Death and Probate Records, 1892-2016. Cummins, N. . ![Where Is the Middle Class? Inequality, Gender and the Shape of the Upper Tail from 60 Million English Death and Probate Records, 1892-2016 [link]](https://bibbase.org/img/filetypes/link.svg "link")
Paper doi abstract bibtex This paper analyses a newly constructed individual level dataset of every English death and probate from 1892-2016. The estimated top wealth shares match closely existing estimates. However, this analysis clearly shows that the 20th century's 'Great Equalization' of wealth stalled in mid-century. The probate rate, which captures the proportion of English with any significant wealth at death rose from 10% in the 1890s to 40% by 1950 and has stagnated to 2016. Despite the large declines in the wealth share of the top 1%, from 73% to 20%, the median English person died with almost nothing throughout. All changes in inequality after 1950 involve a reshuffling of wealth within the top 30%. Further, I find that a log-normal distribution fits the tail of the empirical data better than a Pareto power law. Finally, I show that the top wealth shares are increasingly and systematically male as one ascends in wealth, 1892-1992, but this has equalized over the 20th century.
@unpublished{cumminsWhereMiddleClass2019,
title = {Where Is the {{Middle Class}}? {{Inequality}}, {{Gender}} and the {{Shape}} of the {{Upper Tail}} from 60 {{Million English Death}} and {{Probate Records}}, 1892-2016},
author = {Cummins, Neil},
date = {2019},
journaltitle = {CEPR Discussion Paper},
doi = {10.2139/ssrn.3314935},
url = {https://cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=13436},
abstract = {This paper analyses a newly constructed individual level dataset of every English death and probate from 1892-2016. The estimated top wealth shares match closely existing estimates. However, this analysis clearly shows that the 20th century's 'Great Equalization' of wealth stalled in mid-century. The probate rate, which captures the proportion of English with any significant wealth at death rose from 10\% in the 1890s to 40\% by 1950 and has stagnated to 2016. Despite the large declines in the wealth share of the top 1\%, from 73\% to 20\%, the median English person died with almost nothing throughout. All changes in inequality after 1950 involve a reshuffling of wealth within the top 30\%. Further, I find that a log-normal distribution fits the tail of the empirical data better than a Pareto power law. Finally, I show that the top wealth shares are increasingly and systematically male as one ascends in wealth, 1892-1992, but this has equalized over the 20th century.},
pagetotal = {1–41},
keywords = {Intergenerational Transfers of Wealth,Wealth Taxation},
file = {C\:\\Users\\lukis\\AppData\\Roaming\\Zotero\\Zotero\\Profiles\\h20ej2eu.default\\zotero\\storage\\U6L3ZYAQ\\Cummins_2019_Where is the Middle Class.pdf}
}
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