Measuring Income Inequality Using a Graduated Poll Tax: Spain, 1874–1943

Spain’s historical trajectory of income inequality during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has remained relatively absent from wider debates on long-run inequality, largely due to the scarcity of reliable data sources. While much of the international literature has relied on tax records, social tables, and national accounts, Spain has lacked comparable micro-level evidence for the pre–Civil War period.

In this paper, Miguel Artola Blanco and Joana María Pujadas-Mora revisit a largely overlooked source: the impuesto de cédulas personales, a graduated poll tax levied from 1874 to 1943. By developing a methodological framework that uses both tabulated tax statistics and microdata from this source, the paper proposes a new way to reconstruct historical income distributions in Spain and bridge the gap between macro-level estimates and household-level inequality analysis.

KEY FINDINGS

• The graduated poll tax provides a robust new source for measuring historical income inequality in Spain, offering more detailed information than previously recognised.
• Estimates derived from this tax source are broadly consistent with existing measures based on wages, land ownership, and factor incomes.
• The findings reveal a regional pattern of inequality, with higher levels observed in southern Spain, shaped by local economic development and institutions.
• The Madrid 1902 case study shows that the tax records can be used to analyse the top end of the income distribution, in a way comparable to modern top incomes research.
• The San Feliu de Llobregat (1882–1937) longitudinal case study highlights important patterns of local structural transformation, including changes in employment, growth in salaried work, and shifts in skill premia over time.
• The paper establishes a methodological foundation for future historical inequality research, rather than presenting a single definitive inequality series.
• The authors identify promising avenues for further research, including expanding tax microdata across municipalities, refining estimates of property income, and using housing rents as a proxy for urban household income.

Share of adults in the lowest class and inequality at the municipal level. Spain, 1919

AUTHORS

• Miguel Artola Blanco, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
• Joana María Pujadas-Mora, Centre d’Estudis Demogràfics / Open University of Catalonia