Calendrier du 08 novembre 2023
Economic History Seminar
Du 08/11/2023 de 12:00 à 13:30
R1.09
SCHIFANO Sonia (Bocconi)
The distribution of land in Luxembourg (1766–1872): Family-level wealth persistence in the midst of institutional change
écrit avec Sonia Schifano (Bocconi University) and Antoine Paccoud (LISER, LSE)
The paper analyses family-level wealth inequality and social mobility in Dudelange (Luxembourg) between 1766 and 1872. This period saw the end of feudal social relations with the integration of Luxembourg into the French revolutionary regime. The study utilizes archival data and five generations of descendants to connect the declarants of the Maria-Theresa land survey of 1766 with their descendants in the land registries of 1842 and 1872. Links between individuals are made from vertical parent-children-grandchildren relationships, however these relationships are not constant. To account for this variability, the number of ancestors available for each declarant and the generational descendant-ancestor distance that separates each declarant from his or her ancestors were considered in the social mobility analysis.
The inequality analysis reveals a decline in the Gini coefficient for land ownership between 1766 and 1842, indicative of the dissolution of the feudal system. This reduction becomes less pronounced upon excluding property-less declarants from the 1766 dataset (note that in 1842 and 1872, these individuals are already excluded due to the nature of the data source). The disparity in the Gini coefficient between 1766 and 1842 lastly disappear when non-residents in Dudelange are removed from the analysis.
Owing to data constraints, the social mobility analysis is also based on declarants that are residents of Dudelange and shows a high persistence of land among closer generations throughout the period. This persistence discloses that family-level transmission mechanisms limit social mobility and strongly advantage those with ancestors owning property wealth, even when there are significant changes in the organization of property relations.