ABSTRACT

Part I has established that the first industrial revolution generated inequality trends that appear to confirm the Kuznets curve, a stylized fact that has characterized so many countries that have followed the British example in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the British case, inequality seems to have risen from the Napoleonic Wars to mid-century, after which the distribution leveled up to World War I. Not only are these inequality trends apparent in rates of pay and in the earnings distribution, they also appear in size distributions of income.