Abstract
We use a novel income tax data set to present evidence on the evolution of income concentration in the last 60 years of colonial rule in India. These data allow us to study the evolution of income concentration at the country level as well as the location of top income earners across provinces. We identify three key facts: (1) the evolution of income concentration in British India was nonlinear, following a U-shape, (2) the majority of top income earners were non-Europeans, and (3) the geographical location of top income earners changed over time with the province of Bombay gaining in importance in the early XXth century. We provide an interpretation of these results in the light of the economic and political changes in British India over the period.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 459-469 |
| Number of pages | 11 |
| Journal | Journal of Development Economics |
| Volume | 127 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Jul 2017 |
Funding
We thank Ga\u00EBl Cassan Brun, Denis Cogneau, Tirthankar Roy, Thomas Piketty, the seminar participants at New Delhi Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities, the Paris School of Economics, the EUDN Conference, the ISI conference, three anonymous referees and the editor for valuable comments and suggestions. All remaining errors are our own. We are grateful to Lorenzo Cerda Planas for outstanding research assistance. Financial support from the CEPREMAP, ESRC-DFID Joint Fund (grant no. ES/I033114/1) and the\u00A0Institute for New Economic Thinking is gratefully acknowledged.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Institute for New Economic Thinking | |
| Lorenzo Cerda Planas | |
| CEPREMAP | |
| Paris School of Economics | |
| Not added | 340831 |
| Economic and Social Research Council | ES/I033114/1 |
Keywords
- Colonization
- India
- Inequality
- Top incomes