F.— ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS. 18.9 



VII. Comparative Inequality of Distribution. 



I regard the foregoing imposing schedule of questions as all pertinent 

 to the economic inquiry. To some of them we have at present no answer 

 at all ; to others we have a partial answer or general indication ; to others, 

 again, a little reasoned analysis will afford us a high degree of probability. 

 Within the scope of this paper I cannot do justice to all these questions 

 or explore them all. I may perhaps summarise what we know in regard 

 to some of them and give provisional answers to a few and suggest my 

 views on others. 



I. I have been able to find no positive evidence that the slope of distri- 

 bution has materially changed in the past hundred years.* The scale of 

 wealth is different and the whole population is strung out on the line 

 further up. There are probably at the very top much richer men, and 

 wealth on a scale unknown in former times. In this way I think that a 

 given minute fraction of the people holds to-day a slightly larger fraction 

 of the total income. So much of this has arisen, in the cases of great 

 wealth, from activity during the income-receiver's life that it is not so 

 much a part of the problem of inheritance as of distribution of the product 

 of industry, the potentiality of the industrial system and accumulation of 

 savings during life. This broader aspect of distribution is not the subject 

 of our discussion. Some forces tend in an opposite direction, i.e. to lessen 

 the centralising force of bequest : Heavy Death Duty taxation on these 

 large aggregations, and the lessening importance of land in total wealth, 

 and the weakening influence of primogeniture, which makes for family 

 diffusion rather than concentration. Even if the distribution slope has 

 not greatly changed, probably the inheritance system affects the angle 

 of the existing slope. Prof. Pigou remarks, in regard to the alleged 

 immutability of the Pareto law, that income depends not on capacity 

 alone, but on a combination of capacity and inherited property, and the 

 latter is not distributed in proportion to capacity but is concentrated 

 upon a small number of persons. This must deflect the curve from its 

 normal form. The actual form cannot, therefore, be ' necessary ' unless 

 the broad scheme of inheritance now in vogue is also necessary. But a 

 very large change in the existing laws is not essential to bring about a 

 great difference in the income curve, since property is more unevenly 

 distributed. Thus 76| per cent, of the population owned only 7 per cent, 

 of the property, but 73 per cent, owned 35^ per cent, of the income. 

 (Clay : ' Property and Inheritance,' p. 19.) As regards the United 

 States, Watkins ( Growth of Large Fortunes ') says : ' For wages, the 

 upper decile is less than twice the median down to 5/4ths the median. For 

 salaries it is twice the median, and for property eight times the median.' 

 So far as Great Britain is concerned, the statistical indications are that 

 static redistribution to-day would not add an appreciably different 

 percentage to the modal income than formerly. Statistical evidence for 

 past years for other countries on this point is too scanty to be of any use. 

 There are no distribution figures of any value for Germany prior to 1890, 

 and none for France at all, while the United States figures are good, but 

 quite recent, and no comparisons with earlier times are possible. Kesearch 



•■ Vide my Wealth and Taxable Capacity, iii. 



