Economics Data

The economic data were reconstructed using unpublished archives and official publications of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, available at the Centre des Archives Economiques et Financières (Savigny-le-Temple, France). These archives cover departmental income tax tabulations for the years 1960-1969 and 1986-1998. The archives also provide information about the number of imposable tax units, the amount of income declared and the tax paid for income tax in each department of metropolitan France between 1922 and 2000. Finally, these archives provide information about inheritance declarations between 1900 and 1960. In particular, the number of successions by level of inheritance brackets as well as the composition of declarations by type of asset are provided for each department. The statistics collected for the recent period are directly available on the website of the Ministry of Economy and Finance.

Income

Using departmental tax tabulations for the years 1960-1969, 1986-1998, and 2001-2015, we calculated departmental income distributions for each of these years. Computations follow a methodological protocol inspired by the methodological protocol used by researchers at the World Inequality Database, and freely available here.

Furthermore, using aggregate income tax data for the years 1922-1959, 1970-1985, and 1999-2000, we computed the fiscal income of each department for the period 1922-2015.

Wealth

In the future, we plan to make available wealth data in the departments of metropolitan France for the period 1900-1960.