Economic Inequality in Preindustrial Germany, ca. 1300 – 1850

Abstract

This article provides an overview of economic inequality in Germany from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century. It builds upon data produced by the German Historical School, which from the late nineteenth century pioneered inequality studies, and adds new archival information for selected areas. Inequality tended to grow during the early modern period, with an exception: the Thirty Years' War (1618-48), together with the 1627-29 plague, seem to have caused a temporary but significant phase of inequality reduction. This is in contrast to other European areas, from Italy to the Low Countries, where during 1500-1800 inequality growth was monotonic. Some evidence of a drop in inequality is also found after the Black Death of 1348-49. Our findings contribute to deepen and nuance our knowledge of long-term inequality trends in preindustrial Europe, and offer new material to current debates on the determinants of inequality change in western societies, past and present.2

Inheritance Institutions and Landholding Inequality in Nineteenth-Century Germany: Evidence from Hesse-Cassel Villages and Towns

“…These results are comparable to those of Alfani, Gierok, and Schaff (forthcoming, Table 2): for their entire set of German cities, towns, and rural communities, they calculated an aggregated Gini index of 0.617 in 1800, and for just rural Germany they calculated an aggregated Gini index of 0.593 in 1850. Results for Hesse-Cassel are also close to but somewhat below those for parts of early modern northern Italy, where Gini coefficients lay between 0.600 and 0.940, based on the work of Alfani and co-authors, where arguably, the nature of communities was more urban.…”

“…German wealth inequality is not well documented, with the exception of a new study from Alfani, Gierok, and Schaff (forthcoming), which uses property tax registers to estimate wealth inequality for a host of German cities and a few rural communities from the fourteenth through the nineteenth centuries. 9 My study covers a much larger and more comparable set of rural communities.…”

Economic inequality in preindustrial Europe, 1300-1800: methods and results from the EINITE project

“…Introduced in my study of the Sabaudian State, 22 later it has been applied to the Florentine State (Tuscany) as well as to the southern Low Countries 23 and more recently to the Republic of Venice 24 and to Germany. 25 The method is being applied also to the Kingdom of Naples. 26 To build proper regional measures of inequality it does not suffice to calculate averages of local Gini indexes or of other inequality measures, as this would cause a loss of crucial information about between-community inequality.…”

“…Germany is a partial exception, as there we find traces of a temporary phase of inequality decline associated to the Thirty Years' War (1618-48), which was the most destructive conflict of early modern Europe. 39 Another possible exception is Portugal, for which some evidence of early modern (income) inequality decline has been produced. Possibly this was the consequence of "a long wave of agriculture-based economic expansion during which the demand for labour mostly ran ahead of that for land".…”

Pandemics and Political Development

“…44See Alfani, Gierok, and Schaff 2020 for direct evidence on the reduction in wealth inequality in German-speaking Europe following the Black Death. Similar evidence is provided by Alfani 2015 and Alfani and Ammannati 2017 for the Piedmont and Tuscany regions of Italy, respectively.…”