Wealth and income inequality on the rise in preindustrial Southern Italy 1550-1800

Economic inequality in pre-industrial societies has only recently become the subject of systematic research. Southern Italy offers a particularly good setting for studying the long-term relationship between economic inequality and economic decline, as the economy of the Kingdom of Naples stagnated from the second half of the sixteenth century.

In this new paper, Guido Alfani and Sergio Sardone draw on newly collected archival information from the local catasti, which include detailed information on various components of wealth (real estate, capital, credit and debt, and animals, boats, etc.). The information collected for a sample of communities is aggregated to produce regional-level estimates for the period 1550-1800. These results are compared with recently published data for other Italian and European regions or states. The paper also reconstructs the total income distribution for the mid-eighteenth century, allowing a comparison between wealth and income inequality.

KEY FINDINGS

• In Apulia, wealth inequality increased continuously during the early modern period, in line with trends observed in other parts of Italy and Europe.
• Poverty increased between 1550 and 1800.
• By around 1750, Apulia had reached the “inequality possibility frontier,” meaning that it was about as unequal as it could be without pushing a large part of the population below the subsistence level.

Long-term trend in the share of wealth of the top 10% in the Kingdom of Naples (Apulia) and other Italian pre-unification states, 1500-1800

AUTHOR

• Guido Alfani, Bocconi University, Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality, Stone Center on Wealth Inequality and Social Mobility, WID fellow
• Sergio Sardone, Federico II University of Naples

MEDIA CONTACT

•  press[at]wid.world