Abstract
The chapter reviews existing evidence regarding four aspects of economic inequality: relative factor rents, which relate to the factorial distribution of income and also underlie the so-called Williamson index (y/wus), which is correlated with the Gini index of household income; real inequality in terms of opposite movements of the price of consumer baskets consumed by different strata of society; the inequality of pay according to gender and skill, as well as between town and countryside; and wealth inequality, particularly with respect to the access to land. The main result is that, with given technology and agrarian institutions, there is a positive correlation between population and inequality.
Highlights
Economic inequality usually refers to inequality with respect to income and wealth
Around 1850, even after rapid growth of modern industry had started in the 1830s and 1840s, Germany was still a basically rural country: About 55 per cent of the active population was engaged in agriculture (Table 1). This corresponded with a low urbanization rate; over much of the early modern period the share of total population living in communities with more than 5000 inhabitants remained below 10 percent
This chapter has surveyed the available information on several dimensions of economic inequality in early modern Germany
Summary
Economic inequality usually refers to inequality with respect to income (flows) and wealth (stocks). Already the ratios of the prices paid for the use of factors of production – such as wages, land rent and interest rates – and the factorial distribution of income can tell us something about economic inequality. To the extent that households complement income from labour with income from other factors of production, wealth inequality with respect to land ownership, physical capital and financial capital constitute relevant aspects of economic inequality. Given the present state of research there is no information on the distribution of income on the household level for Germany prior to the mid-nineteenth century.[1] This short study surveys existing information on three other aspects of economic inequality, namely, relative prices for the use of factors of production, inequality between pay rates for different occupations, and wealth ownership concentration.
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