The rich, the poor and the other. Growth and inequality in Buenos Aires from colonial times to the end of 19th century

GELMAN, JORGE; SANTILLI, DANIEL

Jinan

Congreso; 22nd International Congress of Historical Sciences; 2015

International Committee of Historical Sciences

This paper presents the results of a long-term research on inequality in Buenos Aires province from the late 18th century till the end of the 19th century, a project originally aimed to build reliable data series for such a period without official statistics. The study of wealth distribution has been based on tax series from different decades along the 19th century. Moreover, wage series have been constructed for the main categories of skilled and unskilled workers of private and public sectors. Some interesting conclusions may be advanced on the evolution of inequality during this period, along with the first results on functional income distribution based on the evolution of the prices of the factors of production (salaries, prices of land and cattle) in the late 18th century and through the 19th century.