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Top Incomes in Germany, 1871–2014

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 July 2019

Charlotte Bartels*
Affiliation:
Charlotte Bartels is affiliated with the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), the Uppsala Center for Fiscal Studies (UCFS) and the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). E-mail: [email protected].

Abstract

This study provides new evidence on top income shares in Germany from industrialization to the present. Income concentration was high in the nineteenth century, dropped sharply after WWI and during the hyperinflation years of the 1920s, then increased rapidly throughout the Nazi period beginning in the 1930s. Following the end of WWII, German top income shares returned to 1920s levels. The German pattern stands in contrast to developments in France, the United Kingdom, and the United States, where WWII brought a sizeable and lasting reduction in top income shares. Since the turn of the millennium, income concentration in Germany has been on the rise and is today among the highest in Europe. The capital share is consistently positively associated with income concentration, whereas growth, technological change, trade, unions, and top tax rates are positively associated in some periods and negative in others.

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Article
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© The Economic History Association 2019 

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Footnotes

A set of Appendix Tables supplementing this article is available online at https://sites.google.com/site/charlottedsbartels/publications. I thank Thomas Piketty and Daniel Waldenström for most helpful advice throughout the research. Furthermore, this paper benefited from the comments of Thilo Albers, Stefan Bach, Timm Bönke, Gerd Hardach, Hartmut Kaelble, Felix Kersting, Carsten Schröder, and seminar participants at the Paris School of Economics, University of Göttingen, University of Bonn, University of Bremen, Berlin School of Economics, and Humboldt University Berlin. A number of research assistants provided outstanding support in the data collection, most notably Stefan Klocke, Theresa Neef, and Patrick Richter. Financial support from the Fritz Thyssen Foundation is gratefully acknowledged.

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