Termine

This paper provides the first long-run wealth inequality series for Germany. We combine wealth tax data, national accounts' household balance sheets, survey data and lists of large wealth holders to study the accumulation and distribution of wealth in Germany from 1895 to 2017. We find that wealth concentration in Germany was extremely high in the industrialization period, when the top 1% captured more than half of total net wealth. After World War II, this share was reduced to about a third. Wealth concentration has continued to decline throughout the post-war period. Recently, wealth inequality has started to increase again and the top percentile holds about a quarter of total net wealth. [Poster]