دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی پراکندگی منطقه ای نابرابری درآمد در نروژ - قرن نوزدهم - الزویر 2018

abstract

This paper documents, for the first time, municipality- and occupation-level estimates of income inequality between individuals in a European country in the nineteenth century, using a combination of several detailed data sets for Norway in the late 1860s. Urban incomes were on average 4.5 times as high as rural incomes, and the average city Gini coefficient was twice the average rural municipality Gini. All high- or medium-income occupation groups exhibited substantial withinoccupation income inequality. Across municipalities, income inequality is higher in high-income municipalities, and lower in muncipalities with high levels of fisheries and pastoral agriculture. While manufacturing activity is positively correlated with income inequality, the association is not apparent when other economic factors such as the mode of food production is accounted for. The income Gini for Norway as a whole is found to have been 0.546, slightly higher than estimates for the UK and US in the same period.

6. Discussion and conclusion

6.1. Was income inequality in 1868 Norway high?

This paper has shown substantial variation in income both within and between occupation groups and regions of Norway in 1868. As stated in Section 4, these income differences add up to a Gini coefficient of 0.54. How does this compare to other countries? Three relevant reconstructions of income distributions are comparable to those found here. First, Lindert (2000) gives an income Gini of Great Britain in 1867 of 0.49. Second, Lindert and Williamson (2012) give a US Gini coefficient in 1860 of 0.51. Third, Nafziger and Lindert (2012) calculate a Gini coefficient for Russia in 1904 at 0.36. These studies all define inequality at the household level rather than the individual level. Today, Norwegian income inequality is well below that of all these three countries. We know from studies based on tax data (Aaberge and Atkinson, 2010; Aaberge et al., 2016) that income inequality in Norway has fallen substantially over the past 150 years. However, it might still appear surprising that inequality in nineteenth-century Norway was so high, particularly when compared to Russia. As the present paper is defined on a specific population (men aged above 25) and with several assumptions as described in Section 3, we now consider whether, and how, adjusting these would change the estimated Norwegian income inequality. First, we can see how the Norwegian Gini would respond if a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation is applied to translate the men-aged-above-25 Gini to a household Gini. Second, we can adjust the assumptions used in the calculation of the Norwegian Gini to better match those used in the other countries.