The Long‐Run History of Income Inequality in Denmark†
We are most grateful to Rewal Schmidt Sørensen for sharing with us the historical data that he collected for his study (1989, 1993). His work and data have formed an invaluable starting point for our research. We thank Facundo Alvaredo and Daniel Waldenström for their help and encouragement, the anonymous referees, and Thomas Piketty, Ingrid Henriksen, Jesper Roine, Claus Thustrup Kreiner and Peter Schultz‐Møller for valuable comments and suggestions.
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Abstract
We use historical publications and micro data from tax returns to construct internationally comparable estimates of the development in income inequality in Denmark over the last 140 years. The study shows that income inequality and top income shares have declined during several distinct phases in between periods of stability. Furthermore, the quality of the Danish data allows us to analyse not only the development in top income shares but also broader inequality measures such as the Gini coefficient. These analyses show that top income shares are a good proxy for the underlying development in inequality.
