Inequality in rural Catalonia in the early eighteenth century

Abstract

This paper analyses economic inequality in central Catalonia in the early 1720s using the information contained in cadastral tax records. The data set includes 2,617 male taxpayers distributed across 17 rural villages. We take advantage of the large amount of information provided by the cadastre to study economic inequality in a pre-industrial society by looking at both wealth and income inequality. Compared to previous work on Western Europe, our results generally show high levels of inequality in rural Catalonia. However, inequality seems to be lower among those groups engaged in non-agricultural activities. Then, and given the traditional presence of proto-industrial activities in this area of Catalonia, we explore the effect of proto-industrial wool specialization on levels of inequality.