Top Incomes in France in the Twentieth Century: Inequality and Redistribution, 1901-1998

by Thomas Piketty, Seth Ackerman (Translator)

Overview

A landmark in contemporary social science, this pioneering work by Thomas Piketty explains the facts and dynamics of income inequality in France in the twentieth century. On its publication in French in 2001, it helped launch the international program led by Piketty and others to explore the grand patterns and causes of global inequality—research that has since transformed public debate. Appearing here in English for the first time, this stunning achievement will take its place alongside Capital in the Twenty-First Century as a modern classic of economic analysis.

Top Incomes in France in the Twentieth Century is essential in part because of Piketty’s unprecedented efforts to uncover, untangle, and present in clear form data about patterns in tax and inheritance in France dating back to 1900. But it is also an exceptional work of analysis, tracking and explaining with Piketty’s characteristically lucid prose the effects of political conflict, war, and social change on the economic pressures and public policies that determined the lives of millions. A work of unusual intellectual power and ambition, Top Incomes in France in the Twentieth Century is a vital resource for anyone concerned with the economic, political, and social history of France, and it is central to ongoing debates about social justice, inequality, taxation, and the evolution of capitalism around the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674986237
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	05/07/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	1104
File size:	187 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Thomas Piketty is Professor of Economics and Economic History at L’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and at the Paris School of Economics and Codirector of the World Inequality Lab.

Table of Contents

Contents Preface to the New Edition��������������������������������� Acknowledgments���������������������� Introduction: Why Study Top Incomes? Part One: The Evolution of Income Inequality in France in the Twentieth Century 1. A Fivefold Increase in “Average” Purchasing Power in the Twentieth Century 2. The Evolution of the Level and Composition of Top Incomes in France in the Twentieth Century 3. Wage Inequality in France in the Twentieth Century��������������������������������������������������&# Part Two: Top Incomes and Redistribution in France in the Twentieth Century 4. Income Tax Legislation from 1914 to 1998 5. Who Paid What? Part Three: France and the Kuznets Curve 6. Was the “End of the Rentiers” a Tax Illusion? 7. How Does France Compare with Foreign Experiences? Conclusion: Top Incomes in France at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century Appendix A: The Raw Statistical Tables Compiled by the Tax Administration from Income Tax Returns (1915–1998 Tax Years) Appendix B: Methodology and Results of Estimates Based on Income Tax Return Statistics (1915–1998 Tax Years) Appendix C: Complementary Data on Income Tax Legislation�������������������������������������������������� Appendix D: Raw Data, Methodology, and Results of Estimates Based on Statistics from Employer Wage Declarations (1919–1938, 1947, and 1950–1998 Wages) Appendix E: Estimating Consistent Series for the Blue-Collar Wage and the Average Wage over the Long Run (1900–1998) Appendix F: Consumption Price Indexes (1900–1998) Appendix G: Methodology and Results of the Estimates Based on the National Accounts Series (1900–1998) Appendix H: Population, Households, and Socioprofessional Structure, 1900–1998 Appendix I: Estimates of the Income Distribution in Twentieth-Century France Appendix J: Raw Data, Methodology, and Results of Estimates Based on the Statistics Derived from Bequest Declarations (1902–1994 Bequests) Appendix K: Raw Data, Methodology, and Estimates Based on Statistics on the Distribution of Parisian Rents (1889, 1901, and 1911 Rents) Notes������������ Works Cited������������������ Contents in Detail������������������������� List of Tables and Illustrations Index������������

Editorial Reviews

In light of Piketty’s history, every part of Hayek’s argument now looks doubtful…The tremendous amount of data he gathers and analyzes (from tax rates to the price of butter) point to unavoidable conclusions. High taxes on income and inheritances can keep inequality in check, or even make it fall…Inequality is not incomprehensible or uncontrollable. It is the result of political decisions…Piketty makes clear, at great length, exactly what would stem the tide.

Pacific Standard - Paul W. Gleason

Top Incomes in France in the Twentieth Century provides an important, detailed, and analytically insightful discussion of the political and legislative history of taxation in France. This book will be of tremendous value to all those interested in issues of social justice, inequality, taxation, and the evolution of capitalism.

Martin O’Neill

Top Incomes in France is simply unavoidable for anyone wanting to understand the historical evolution of inequality in France, and it is the groundwork without which Capital would be nonexistent.

Camille Landais

Thomas Piketty’s Top Incomes in France in the Twentieth Century is in many ways a precursor to his famous Capital in the Twenty-First Century, a pioneering book in the methodological sense with empirical analysis that provides the core around which political and economic developments in France are woven and discussed.

Branko Milanovic

Top Incomes in France in the Twentieth Century provides an important, detailed, and analytically insightful discussion of the political and legislative history of taxation in France. This book will be of tremendous value to all those interested in issues of social justice, inequality, taxation, and the evolution of capitalism.

Martin O’Neill

2018-03-19
"In general…it is a healthy thing to show inequality as it exists": a door-stopping work of economic history that does just that.Opinion-shaking economist Piketty (Paris School of Economics) burst onto the English-reading scene in 2014 with his blockbuster book Capital in the Twenty-First Century. This predecessor volume, published in France in 2001, offers and interprets the body of evidence on which much of his argument was founded. He shows, for example, that economic inequality narrows in times of crisis and war, in some cases because states become more vigorous in collecting taxes when the coffers are empty. So it was in France in the 20th century, when incomes overall followed a non-American pattern, with greater divergence in times of peace and a lessening of gaps among the classes. As Piketty follows, exhaustively, tax records and other documents to construct a portrait of the French economy, he discerns patterns that he explicates in prose—but just as often in the form of tables, which are abundant throughout the book; fully half of the tome is given over to data-clotted appendices and other backmatter. Piketty's prose is generally nontechnical, as when he writes, "in capitalist societies, ownership of the means of production…has always been the surest path to the possibility of attaining a very high income." So how does one become an owner? Not just through acquiring the keys to the factory, but through stock ownership, which "helps to explain why large fortunes are usually made up of stocks." Understanding tax regimes helps one understand the inner workings of an economy, as it is clear to see through the work, and the beneficiaries are therefore reluctant to see their tax records made public, a lesson that will not be lost on American readers living under the hyperactive inequality of the here and now.Innumerate readers need not apply, but this book is still an essential document in following the Pikettian argument developed in later books.

Kirkus Reviews