Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/81291 
Year of Publication: 
2007
Series/Report no.: 
IFN Working Paper No. 722
Publisher: 
Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN), Stockholm
Abstract: 
We study the development of wealth concentration in Sweden over 130 years, from the beginning of industrialization until present day. Our series are based on a wide array of new evidence from estate- and wealth tax data, estimates of foreign and domestic family firm-wealth and of pension and social security wealth. We find that the Swedish wealth concentration was at a historically high level in the agrarian state and that it did not change much during early industrialization. From World War I up until about 1950, the richest percentile lost ground to the rest of the top wealth decile where relatively income rich households accumulated new wealth. In the postwar period, the entire top decile lost out relative to the rest of the population, much due to the spread of owner-occupied housing. Around 1980, wealth compression stopped and inequality increased. We introduce new ways of approximating the effects of international flows and find that the recent increase in Swedish wealth inequality is likely to be larger than what official estimates suggest.
Subjects: 
Wealth concentration
Wealth distribution
Inequality
Income distribution
Sweden
Welfare state
Pension wealth
Augmented wealth
JEL: 
D14
D31
N33
N34
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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