The rich and the destitute in Sweden, 1805-1855: a test of Tocqueville's inequality hypotheses

Abstract

In his Democracy in America, published in i835, Alexis de Tocqueville viewed the United States as a country experiencing decreasing economic inequality during the two generations after independence.' In this study, which drew comparisons between America and Europe, he focused mainly on the reduced influence of the rich, and especially of the landed aristocracy, and made general statements concerning decreasing inequality or, rather, increasing equality in France and elsewhere over a long period. Tocqueville presented a somewhat contrasting view in a paper, also dated i835, dealing with the destitute of Europe. Here he remarked that I7 per cent of the English, but only 4 per cent of the Portuguese, were destitute, and that the wealthier nations and the more advanced areas within countries suffered most from the problems of destitution. Tocqueville also sketched a hypothesis of polar equality, where societies begin with equality in the hunting stage of development and experience increased inequality with the rise of private property. In the later stages of development a more democratic and egalitarian society evolves, producing a U-shaped pattern of changes in equality over time. He placed greater emphasis on the decreasing impact of the rich on the distribution than on the increasing influence of the rising destitute group.2 Because Tocqueville made rather explicit statements about groups located at the tails of the distributions both in different countries and in different areas within the same country, his assertions can be tested statistically. By far the most impressive data sets that can be used for this type of testing are the censuses of wealth in Sweden, beginning in i805. In them, each family was classified as being rich, moderately rich, poor, or destitute, and the results tallied for each parish and town in Sweden and Finland.3