https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3146-601X
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ABSTRACT
In this paper we use administrative tabulations from occupation-based income tax (class tax) to estimate income inequality in the Duchy of Warsaw. We start off by estimating income inequality in the Department of Kalisz, and then use the decomposability of the Theil index to estimate national income inequality based on a sample of Theil indices corresponding to different settlement types. According to our results, income inequality in the Duchy was at a moderate level, although in the biggest cities it was relatively high. Income inequality at county level was positively correlated with the mean income of the county.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The Polish central archives lost over 90% of archival resources during World War II. The economic archive was completely burned down during the Warsaw Uprising.
2 For example, if we change the assumed income of the poor from 60% to 40% of the second tax class, the Gini index in the capital of the Department increases from 0.535 to 0.538. The share of the bottom 50% is reduced from 16.8% to 16.6%. The income share lower than 40% is difficult to assume, because even the income of the poor has to be close to the subsistence cost. Therefore the impact of our assumption is limited.
3 We acknolwedge the usage of toll gpinter software shared by the World Inequality Database (https://wid.world/gpinter/).
4 Here we should keep in mind that income inequality in large cities is usually higher than at the country level. However, the author is not aware of other historical estimates of income inequality in Poland measured using the Theil index.
5 If we limited the classification of settlements to only capitals of departments, and the rest of the counties (in this classification, clear income gaps exist across the settlement types) the Theil Index would equal 0.3987.