Transmission and inequality of wealth: An empirical study of wealth mobility from 1800 to 1938 in France

Abstract

Galton, inequality, inheritance, wealth transmission,

Intergenerational wealth accumulation and dispersion in the Ottoman Empire: observations from eighteenth-century Kastamonu

“…Arrondel and Grange 2006;Main 1975;Jones 1980Jones , introduction, 1982, and they have not thwarted the development of a rich and illuminating economic-history literature on many Western contexts based on similar types of documents. Heirs often tried to conceal portions of their estates from court officials in order to reduce the 'inheritance tax' portion of court fees.…”

“…The literature on cross-generational wealth comparisons has identified various trends in the accumulation and intergenerational transmission of wealth by examining influences on the wealth levels of children at the time of their death (Clark and Cummins 2009;Menchik 1979;Arrondel and Grange 2006;Harbury and Hitchens 1979). Consistent with these studies, we use data from the subsample of father-son pairs for a regression analysis of the determinants of wealth.…”

“…22 The wealthy members of one generation in Kastamonu were thus less successful in transferring their wealth to the next generation than their counterparts in England. Using a sample from nineteenth-and early twentieth-century France, Arrondel and Grange (2006) estimated the elasticity of children's wealth levels relative to parental wealth to be between 0.44 and 0.45 for different samples. 23 Our results also indicate that the difference in wealth inequality was not caused by the egalitarianism of the Islamic inheritance practices.…”

“…In general, intergenerational samples based on estate inventories of parents and children tend to be small, even in studies focused on Western and more modern contexts. sample contains about 250 brothers and fewer than 125 parents Arrondel and Grange's (2006). sample contains about 250 brothers and fewer than 125 parents Arrondel and Grange's (2006).…”

Like Father, Like Son: Inheriting and Bequeathing

“…The relationship between received inheritance and one's own bequest has likewise been studied by Arrondel et al (1997) and Arrondel and Grange (2006) who find that the existence of transfers received from one's parents increases the probability to make the same kind of transfer to one's children.…”