Wealth Inequality in the United States in 1798 and 1860
- 1 August 1984
- journal article
- Published by JSTOR in The Review of Economics and Statistics
- Vol. 66 (3) , 444
- https://doi.org/10.2307/1925000
Abstract
The distribution of wealth in real estate among people in the United States at the end of the eighteenth century has been estimated from a sample of rolls of the census of real estate in 1798. Mean real wealth was $1,433 and the Gini coefficient of inequality was 0.588 with half the adult male population owning property. A comparison with the distribution for real estate in 1860 shows that wealth grew 1.9% a year per person. Relative inequality was a little larger than in 1798 but the difference can be explained by errors in measurement.Keywords
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