The Unassuming Economist

From a VoxEU post by Daniel Waldenström:

“Since 1950, private wealth-income ratios have grown steadily around the Western world, accelerating after 1990. Figure 3 examines this development by decomposing private wealth into three asset groups: housing wealth, pension wealth, and other wealth. 

The main result is that private wealth underwent a structural shift over the 20th century. Around 1900, wealth was dominated by agricultural estates and corporate wealth, assets predominantly held by the rich. During the post-war period, wealth accumulation came mainly in housing and funded pensions, which are assets held by ordinary people. This compositional trend had important distributional implications.”

Figure 3 Decomposing aggregate wealth-income ratios since 1890

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