Inheritance and inequality in a primitive growth economy

• Department of Political and Social Sciences

This session of the Political Behaviour Colloquium features a presentation by EUI Max Weber Fellow, Felix Schaff.

I document the impact of differences in inheritance institutions on wealth inequality in a historical primitive growth economy. I exploit a sharp border between partible and impartible inheritance areas in South-West Germany, and novel household-level data coming from the registers of the 1545 "Turk tax". Partible inheritance — the practice of dividing parents' wealth at death equally among all children — substantially increased wealth inequality and poverty, without generating aggregate prosperity gains. Partibility fragmented land, so that people could not make a living from it anymore. But it also constrained individuals' occupational choices to comparatively less worthwhile jobs. This pushed them into a "poverty trap", which increased inequality from the bottom tail of the wealth distribution. In certain economic contexts, a seemingly egalitarian non-market institution like partible inheritance can increase inequality and reduce economic wellbeing for the majority of the population.

The Zoom link will be sent upon registration. If you would like to receive the paper, please contact PoliticalBehaviour.Colloquium@eui.eu.