Name File Type Size Last Modified
  Replication-package 09/26/2017 08:43:AM

Project Citation: 

Modalsli, Jørgen. The regional dispersion of income inequality in nineteenth-century Norway. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2017-09-26. https://doi.org/10.3886/E100990V1

Project Description

Summary:  View help for Summary
Replication package for "The regional dispersion of income inequality in nineteenth-century Norway", to be published in Explorations in Economic History (accepted September 2017).    

The files contain micro data foundations for estimates of Norwegian income inequality in 1868.

The file "data_compact.dta" (Stata format) contains "pseudo-invididual" observations of all men age 25 or more in Norway in 1868, estimated as described in the paper. Note that any one individual data point cannot stand by itself; analysis must be conducted at the municipality and/or occupation level. This is further explained in the paper.

The file "municipalityfile.dta" (Stata format) contains municipality-level Gini coefficients and covariates.

The file "replicate.zip" contains the necessary files (Stata and Matlab) to replicate the analysis. See "DataReadMe.pdf" for instructions.

Abstract for the paper:  
This paper documents, for the first time, municipality- and occupation-level estimates of income inequality between individuals in a European country in the nineteenth century, using a combination of several detailed data sets for Norway in the late 1860s. Urban incomes were on average 4.5 times as high as rural incomes, and the average city Gini coefficient was twice the average rural municipality Gini. All high- or medium-income occupation groups exhibited substantial within-occupation income inequality.
Across municipalities, income inequality is higher in high-income municipalities, and lower in muncipalities with high levels of fisheries and pastoral agriculture. While manufacturing activity is positively correlated with income inequality, the association is not apparent when other economic factors such as the mode of food production is accounted for.
The income Gini for Norway as a whole is found to have been 0.546, slightly higher than estimates for the UK and US in the same period.  
Funding Sources:  View help for Funding Sources Norwegian Research Council

Scope of Project

Geographic Coverage:  View help for Geographic Coverage Norway
Time Period(s):  View help for Time Period(s) 12/31/1865 – 12/31/1868


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