What Happened to the Incomes of the Rich during the Great Levelling? Evidence from Swedish Individual-level Data, 1909–1950
Much of the income equalization that took place during the first half of the twentieth century was driven by shifts in the shares of the incomes of the rich, such as the top 1 percent. But the available studies using tabulated data have not been wholly able to account for the relative decline in top earners’ incomes. In this paper, we present the first evidence on the composition of the top groups