Russian Inequality on the Eve of Revolution

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: University of California System; University of California Davis; National Bureau of Economic Research; Williams College
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0507
• DOI: 10.1017/S002205071400059X
• 发表日期: 2014
• 页码: 767-798
• 关键词: income; CHINA; england; REFORM; INDIA

摘要

Careful handling of an eclectic data set reveals how unequal were the incomes of different classes of Russians on the eve of Revolution. We estimate incomes by economic and social class in each of the fifty provinces of European Russia. On the eve of military defeat and the 1905 Revolution, Russian income inequality was middling by the standards of that era, and less severe than is inequality today in China, the United States, and Russia itself. We note how the interplay of some distinctive fiscal and relative-price features of Imperial Russia might have shaped the now-revealed level of inequality.