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The evolution of top incomes in Switzerland over the 20th century

Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics volume 147, pages 479–519 (2011)Cite this article

Summary

We study the income concentration in the Swiss federation over the course of the 20th century using federal income tax statistics. The results suggest that top incomes in Switzerland evolved over time rather remaining constant across different income shares. Income concentration peaked during the 1940s, with a slight downward trend until the 1990s. Over the last 15 years, top incomes have recovered. In contrast, the evolution of income concentration is much more heterogeneous on the sub-federal level for the 26 cantons because of the federalist constitution, which has a decentralized taxing power. Consequently, top incomes in some cantons have a downward trend; others show a fall and rise of top incomes over the century, as exemplified by the Kuznets’ hypothesis; some develop rather constantly; and some cantons even produce a striking upward trend.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Lucerne, Frohburgstrasse 3, 4466, 6002, Lucerne, Switzerland

    Christoph A. Schaltegger

Authors
  1. Christoph A. Schaltegger
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  2. Christoph Gorgas
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Correspondence to Christoph A. Schaltegger.

Additional information

We are grateful for helpful comments by participants of the annual meeting of the Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics SSES 2011 in Lucerne, participants of a research seminar at the University of Basel and to Bruno Jeitziner and Roger Ammann both from the Swiss Federal Tax Administration (ESTV) for their comments and extensive data support.

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Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Schaltegger, C.A., Gorgas, C. The evolution of top incomes in Switzerland over the 20th century. Swiss J Economics Statistics 147, 479–519 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03399357

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