Unequal poverty and equal industrialisation: Finnish wealth, 1750–1900

Abstract

We present the first comprehensive, long-run estimates of Finnish wealth and its distribution from 1750 to 1900. Using wealth data from 17,279 probate inventories, we show that Finland was very unequal between 1750 and 1850; the top decile owned about 90% of total wealth. This means that Finland was more unequal than the much wealthier economies Britain, France and the US, which goes against the common assumption of richer economies being more unequal. Moreover, when industrialisation took off in Finland, inequality started a downward trajectory. High inequality 1750-1850 was bottom-driven, by a large share of the population owning nothing or close to nothing of value, while economic development after 1850 was pro-equal since the ownership of forests, since long in the hands of the peasantry, became more valuable with the development of forest-based industries. Our findings thus contradict commonplace assumptions that economic growth and industrialisation are associated with more inequality, as well as recent arguments that very few factors beyond catastrophes can decrease inequality. We instead argue for a more inductive and open approach to the determinants of long-run inequality.

Life on the Edge: Elites, Wealth and Inequality in Sonora 1871-1910

“…There are several strategies to solve the representation problems, some more appropriate than others, depending on the available data. One of these approaches is to employ the age reported in the observations and multiply each observation by the inverse mortality rate for that age group (Bengtsson et al 2017(Bengtsson et al , 2018. This procedure results in a database that gives more weight to the younger population so we can generalise from the sample analysis with more confidence.…”

“…The alternative approach is to consider the known or «true» social class structure in the country and employ it as a weighting factor to balance the sample (Lindert 1981; Bengtsson et al . 2018). Ideally, we would have used the class structure shares for Sonora for each quinquennium, but they were not available.…”

The evolution of credit networks in pre-industrial Finland

“…The same process applies for the number of bank loans. Secondly, I have retrieved national estimates for occupational categories based on Bengtsson et al (2019). I have applied the same calculation for these estimates.…”

“…Comparison between probate inventories and bank account records in the future could help us resolve this issue of diffusion thanks to network analysis. Bengtsson et al (2019) and the dataset. Table A3.…”

“…Estimation of the living population with a bank loan in Kristinestad and Lapväärtti according to the socio-professional repartition, 1905-14. Living population estimation based on Bengtsson et al (2019).…”