Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Deviant behaviour? Inequality in Portugal 1565–1770

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Cliometrica Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This study offers an estimate of Portuguese income inequality over a period of more than 200 years. It is presented in three widely spaced benchmarks: 1565, 1700 and 1770. This entirely new index is based in large measure on a little-researched annual personal income tax (décima) instituted in 1641. It covered all social classes, including nobility and clergy and every form of household earnings, and permits therefore a singularly accurate measure. It allows us to conclude that, in contrast with early modern Europe in general, Portugal experienced a notable decline in economic inequality. Several freshly minted quantitative indicators enable us to conclude that the burden of the explanation for this apparently ‘deviant’ behaviour can be ascribed to changes in the functional distribution of income. Significant transformations in Portuguese agriculture—towards labour-intensive products like maize and wine—permanently shifted the wage–rental ratio in favour of labour. The skill premium fell but its contribution was relatively modest. It was a time of sustained economic growth, but this was not associated with pronounced urbanization or industrialization.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1

Sources: see text and Table 3

Fig. 2

Sources: see text and Table 3

Fig. 3

Sources: Tables 2 and 3

Fig. 4

Sources: Table 5; Palma and Reis (2016)

Fig. 5

Sources: Table 5; Palma and Reis (2016)

Fig. 6

Source: Palma and Reis (2016)

Fig. 7

Sources: Palma and Reis (2016); PWR database

Fig. 8

Sources: Palma and Reis (2016) and Table 5

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. A classic work on this problematic is Engerman and Sokoloff (1997).

  2. Faísca and Lopes (2015) are the first since to have introduced a modern approach to this field.

  3. This obliges us to incorporate two data sets which are constructed differently: the décima tax and the serviço tax of 1565, of which more below. The latter was also used by Johnson (2002).

  4. The technical reasons are given in Cowell (2011). Only a few historical inequality studies have employed Theil indices among them Morrisson and Snyder (2000), Santiago-Caballero (2011) and Nicolini and Ramos-Palencia (2011). None of them has used this metric, however, in order to estimate a national index of inequality from a limited collection of data, like here.

  5. To permit comparisons with the results of other researchers, below (Table 3) we display the scores for local inequality estimates both as Ginis and Theils.

  6. For a non-Portuguese example of social table-based research, see Williamson (2009). For probate-based studies, see Cosgel and Ergene (2012) and Canbakal and Filiztekin (2013).

  7. The earliest known social tables are for the nineteenth century and are, respectively, in Franzini (1843) and Costa (1851).

  8. To date few monographs have relied on probate inventories: examples are an eighteenth century urban credit study and others concerning nineteenth century landed elites. See Rocha (1991, 1996) and Fonseca (1996).

  9. The legislation on this tax is copious and conveniently compiled in the site http://www.juslusitaniae.fcsh.unl.pt. In the second half of the eighteenth century, the revenue from it amounted to 11 per cent of total state income (Costa et al. 2016: 219). The tax rolls used in the present study have been collected, for the décima, from the municipal archives of the localities to which they relate. The remaining ones are in print and can be found in: Lisbon-1565 (Livro 1947–8); Coimbra-1565, 1599 and 1613 (Oliveira 1971), Loulé-1564 (Magalhães 1970) and Tavira-1699 (Magalhães 1993).

  10. The exclusion of religious corporations, i.e., regular clergy, from our assessment data does not necessarily imply any underestimate since it would be the equivalent to not including state corporations in the calculation of inequality in modern times. The church held out for an exemption of all its members, including the secular clergy, until the 1760 s, and paid lump sums at times but ultimately had to give in. See Conde (2002/3). Individual priests, however, are regularly found in all periods on the rolls of tax payers. In some localities, beggars and others were shown to have no income at all. In such cases, given that they must have gained a ‘survival income’, we have attributed to them one half of the lowest earnings from labour shown in the tax roll. According to Tracy (2015: 515), in Europe, from the sixteenth century on, ‘hitherto exempt clergy and nobles were now for the first time subjected’ to these impositions.

  11. There is no major history of Portuguese public finance during the Ancien Regime. Specifically on the décima, see Silva (1987), Magalhães (2004) and Costa (2009).

  12. The exact chronology of these oscillations can be found in http://www.iuslusitaniae.fcsh.unl.pt/.

  13. The exaction of such levies by the Portuguese kings has been little explored by economic historians. See, however, Gonçalves (1964) and Dominguez (2015).

  14. The 1565 tax rolls are a well-known source for historians. They have been used by Rodrigues (1970), Magalhães (1970) and Oliveira (1971). The full text of the Lisbon tax roll has been transcribed in Livro (1947–8), which also contains the royal edict specifying the rules for its application.

  15. Examples of situations where significant segments of the population were left out of the tax rolls, and the implications arising from this are found in Piedmont and Florence (Alfani 2015; Alfani and Ammannati 2016); and the Netherlands (Van Zanden 1995; McCants 2007).

  16. Faísca and Lopes (2015) corroborate this finding for three localities (Arraiolos, Avis and Portalegre) in the province of Alentejo for the early eighteenth century.

  17. Morrisson and Snyder (2000) and Santiago-Caballero (2011) show how in the course of time a simple set of fiscal arrangements could be transformed into a cumbersome mosaic of fiscal localism, which soon became fossilized.

  18. The Regimento da Décima of 1654 prescribed the following steps for compiling a tax roll: (1) start with the list of parishioners, and call them in one by one to describe their employment, assets and income (2) verify this information by questioning other people (3) walk up and down the street to check the names of the residents and see whether any are missing or whether there are any new ones (4) calculate the assessments and write them into two copies of the roll, one to be kept locally and the other to be sent to Lisbon. See http://www.juslusitaniae.fcsh.unl.pt.

  19. Another, more elaborate method would have involved examining how income was spread out over the different deciles of the distribution. This is done by Faísca and Lopes (2015) for a small sample of localities and corroborates our graphic findings.

  20. Additional histograms for other localities can be obtained on request from the author. For a similar situation regarding Naples in 1811, see Malanima (2006).

  21. Van Zanden (1995) follows a similar procedure but employs five categories instead.

  22. To arrive at this, we have discarded a number of unsatisfactory tax rolls employed by Johnson (2002). The main reasons were either a large numbers of fiscal exemptions and exclusions in some pre-décima lists, or a lack of access to the original lists of individual taxpayers. Often Johnson presents the data in an aggregated form. Owing to difficulties in sampling the national décima pool, the contents of which are widely spread across the country, we chose the localities to which we had easier access.

  23. For four entries, data were unavailable for calculating Ginis.

  24. Three recent studies have used this strategy with success, both to fill in information gaps, as we do here, and in order to model the factors which determine inequality. We use their explanatory variables. See Malanima (2006); Williamson (2009); and Ryckbosch (2016).

  25. Morrisson (2000) includes several national studies covering significant time spans, but they are shorter and encompass mainly the period of industrialisation. However, a few have covered similar or longer intervals—Alfani (2015); Ryckbosch (2016); Van Zanden (1995).

  26. Practically every study in this field has concluded in a similar vein. Hoffman et al. (2002) find that: ‘inequality within the nations of western Europe has risen greatly’ (p. 324). This is echoed by Van Zanden (1995): ‘a super Kuznets curve spanning many centuries […] was characterized by rising inequality’ (p. 662). Ryckbosch (2016: 1) speaks of ‘a clear growth in economic inequality in the two centuries prior to the industrial revolution’.

  27. Kuznets (1955). The present description of these four hypotheses can be followed in two excellent summaries by Van Zanden (1995) and Ryckbosch (2016).

  28. Invoked by Van Zanden (1995) and Ryckbosch (2016).

  29. In Holland and in particular the Dutch cities, the exact opposite occurred. See Van Zanden (1995).

  30. For examples, see Neto (1997), on the one hand, and Salvado (2010), on the other.

  31. Alfani (2015) shows how building up and unifying a military Piedmontese state in the sixteenth century forced the monarch to become more extractive.

References

  • Alfani G (2015) Economic inequality in northwestern Italy: a long-term view (fourteenth to eighteenth centuries). J Econ Hist 75:1058–1096

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Alfani G, Ammannati F (2016) Long-term trends in economic inequality: the case of the Florentine State (late thirteenth-early nineteenth centuries). Econ Hist Rev (forthcoming)

  • Alvaredo F (2008) Top incomes and earnings in Portugal 1936–2005. Explor Econ Hist 46:404–417

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Alvarez-Nogal C, de la Prados de la Escosura L (2007) The decline of Spain (1500–1850): conjectural estimates. Eur Rev Econ Hist 11:319–366

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Alvarez-Nogal C, Prados de la Escosura L (2013) The rise and fall of Spain (1270–1850). Econ Hist Rev 66:1–37

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bairoch P, Batou J, Chèvre P (1988) La Population des Villes Européennes, 800–1850. Librairie Droz, Geneva

    Google Scholar 

  • Bértola L, Prados de la Escosura L, Williamson JG (2010) Latin American inequality in the long Run. Rev de Historia Economica J Iberian Lat Am Econ Hist 28(2):219–226

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Broadberry S, Campbell B, Klein A, Overton M, van Leeuwen B (2015) British economic growth 1270–1870. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Canbakal H, Filiztekin A (2013) Wealth and inequality in Ottoman lands in the early modern period. In: Paper presented at the Rice University conference on the political economy of the muslim world

  • Conde AF (2002/3) O Mosteiro de S. Bento de Cástris e a décima eclesiástica. Revista Portuguesa de História XXXVI:161–172

  • Cortesão J (1964) Os factores democráticos na formação de Portugal. In Obras Completas 1:247–265

    Google Scholar 

  • Cosgel M, Ergene B (2012) Inequality of wealth in the Ottoman Empire: war, weather, and long-term trends in eighteenth century Kastamonu. J Econ Hist 72:308–331

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Costa AC (1708) Corografia e Descrição Topográfica do Famoso Reino de Portugal, vol 3. Valentim Deslandes, Lisboa

  • Costa CA (1851) Estatística Coordenada sobre os Arrolamentos da Décima Lançada em Diversos Concelhos do Districto de Lisboa. Imprensa Nacional, Lisboa

    Google Scholar 

  • Costa LF (2009) Fiscal innovations in early modern states: which war did really matter in the Portuguese case? Working paper no 40, GHES/ISEG, Lisbon

  • Costa L, Lains P, Miranda S (2016) An economic history of Portugal, 1143–2010. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Cowell FA (2011) Measuring inequality. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Dominguez R (2015) La réalité: Les pedidos du Portugal et la collecte de recettes extraordinaires à la fin du Moyen Âge. In: Béguin K (ed) Ressources Publiques et Construction Étatique en Europe XIIIº–XVIIIº siècle. Comité pour l’histoire économique et financière de la France-IGPD, Paris, pp 49–66

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Engerman SL, Sokoloff KL (1997) Factor endowments, institutions and differential paths of growth among new world economies: a view from economic historians of the United States. In: Haber S (ed) How Latin America fell behind. Essays on the economic histories of Brazil and Mexico, 1800–1914. Stanford University Press, Stanford, pp 260–304

  • Faísca CM, Lopes B (2015) Desigualdade de rendimento no Alentejo do Antigo Regime: Arraiolos, Avis e Portalegre (1690–1725). Análise Soc L:330–354

    Google Scholar 

  • Fonseca HA (1996) O Alentejo no Século XIX: Economia e Atitudes Económicas. Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda, Lisboa

    Google Scholar 

  • Franzini MM (1843) Considerações acerca da Renda Total da Nação Portuguesa e sua Distribuição por Classes com algumas Reflexões sobre o Imposto da Décima. Imprensa Nacional, Lisboa

    Google Scholar 

  • Godinho VM [1971] (1980) Estrutura da Antiga Sociedade Portuguesa, 4th ed. Arcádia, Lisboa

  • Gonçalves I (1964) Pedidos e Empréstimos em Portugal durante a Idade Média. Ciência Técnica Fiscal, Lisboa

    Google Scholar 

  • Guilera J (2010) The evolution of top income and wealth shares in Portugal since 1936. Revista de Historia Económica—Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History 28:139–171

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hanus J (2013) Real inequality in the early modern Low Countries: the city of ‘s-Hertogenbosch, 1500-1660. Econ Hist Rev 66:733–756

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hoffman P, Jacks D, Levin PA, Lindert P (2002) Real inequality in Europe since 1500. J Econ Hist 62:322–355

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Johnson HB (2002) Teorias maltusianas confirmadas? Algumas reflexões sobre as alterações na distribuição da riqueza e rendimento em Portugal (1309–1789). In: Johnson HB (ed) Camponeses e Colonizadores: Estudos de História Luso-Brasileira. Estampa, Lisboa, pp 103–141

  • Kuznets S (1955) Economic growth and income inequality. Am Econ Rev XLV:1–28

    Google Scholar 

  • Lains P, Gomes E, Guilera J (2008) Are dictatorships more unequal? Economic growth and wage inequality during Portugal’s Estado Novo, 1944–1974. Working papers in economic history, Universidad Carlos III WP 08-08

  • Livro do Lançamento e Serviço que a Cidade de Lisboa fez a El Rei Nosso Senhor no Ano de 1565: Documentos para a História da Cidade de Lisboa (1947–8) (Lisboa: Câmara Municipal de Lisboa)

  • Magalhães JR (1970) Para o Estudo do Algarve Económico durante o Século XVI. Cosmos, Lisboa

    Google Scholar 

  • Magalhães JR (1993) O Algarve Económico, 1600–1773. Estampa, Lisboa

    Google Scholar 

  • Magalhães JR (2004) Dinheiro para a guerra: as décimas da Restauração. Hispania LXIV:157–182

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Malanima P (2006) Pre-modern equality. Income distribution in the Kingdom of Naples (1811). Unublished paper presented at the International Congress of Economic History, Helsinki (2006)

  • McCants A (2007) Inequality among the poor of eighteenth century Amsterdam. Explor Econ Hist 44(1):1–21

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Milanovic B, Lindert PH, Williamson JG (2011) Pre-industrial inequality. Econ J 121:255–272

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Morrisson C (2000) Historical perspectives on income distribution: the case of Europe. In: Atkinson AB, Bourguignon F (eds) Handbook of income distribution, vol 1. Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp 217–260

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Morrisson C, Snyder W (2000) The income inequality of France in historical perspective. Eur Rev Econ Hist 4:59–83

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Neto MS (1997) Terra e conflito: Região de Coimbra (1700–1834). Palimage, Viseu

    Google Scholar 

  • Nicolini E, Ramos-Palencia F (2011) Comparing income and wealth inequality in pre-industrial economies. Lessons from Spain in the 18th century. Unpublished paper presented at the Iberometrics V meeting, Barcelona

  • Nicolini E, Ramos-Palencia F (2016) Decomposing income inequality in a backward pre-industrial economy: old castile (Spain) in the middle of the 18th century. Econ Hist Rev 69:747–772

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • O’Rourke KH, Williamson JG (2005) From Malthus to Ohlin: trade, industrialisation and distribution since 1800. J Econ Growth 10:5–34

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Oliveira A (1971) A Vida Económica e Social de Coimbra de 1537 a 1640 (Coimbra: Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Coimbra, 2 vols)

  • Palma N, Reis J (2016) From convergence to divergence: Portuguese demography and economic growth, 1500–1850. Groningen Growth and Development Centre Research Memorandum #161. University of Groningen - Groningen Growth and Development Centre

  • Ribeiro O (1986) Portugal, o Mediterrâneo e o Atlântico. Estudo Geográfico, Lisbon

  • Rocha MM (1991) Níveis de fortuna e estruturas patrimoniais no Alentejo: Monsaraz, 1800-50. Análise Soc 26:629–651

    Google Scholar 

  • Rocha MM (1996) Actividade credíticia em Lisboa (1770-1830). Análise Soc 31:579–598

    Google Scholar 

  • Rodrigues JA (1968) Travail et societé urbaine au Portugal dans la seconde moitié du XVIe siècle’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Paris

  • Rodrigues JA (1970) Ecologia urbana de Lisboa na segunda metade do século XVI. Análise Soc 10:96–115

    Google Scholar 

  • Ryckbosch W (2016) Economic inequality and growth before the industrial revolution: a case study of the Low Countries (Fourteenth–Nineteenth Centuries). Eur Rev Econ Hist 20:1–22

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sala i Martin X (2002) The disturbing ‘rise’ of global income inequality. National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working paper no. 8904. Cambridge: MA, April

  • Salvado JP (2010) Nobreza, monarquia e império: a casa senhorial dos Almotacés-mores do Reino (Séculos XVI–XVIII). Lisboa: Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Ph.D. dissertation)

  • Santiago-Caballero C (2011) Income inequality in Central Spain, 1690–1800. Explor Econ Hist 48:83–96

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Serrão J (1969) Do Sebastianismo ao Socialismo em Portugal. Horizonte, Lisboa

    Google Scholar 

  • Silva ÁF (1987) Família e trabalho doméstico no hinterland de Lisboa: Oeiras, 1763–1810. Análise Soc XXIII:531–562

    Google Scholar 

  • Steckel RH, Moehling CM (2001) Rising inequality: trends in the distribution of wealth in industrializing New England. J Econ Hist 61:160–183

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tracy JD (2015) Taxation and state debt. In: Scott H (ed) The Oxford handbook of early modern history, 1530–1750, volume II—cultures and power. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 513–537

    Google Scholar 

  • Van Zanden JL (1995) Tracing the beginning of the Kuznets curve: Western Europe during the early modern period. Econ Hist Rev XLVIII:643–664

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • van Zanden JL, van Leeuwen B (2012) Persistent but not consistent: the growth of national income in Holland 1347‐1807. Explor Econ Hist 49:119–130

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Williamson JG (2009) History without evidence: Latin American inequality since 1491, NBER working paper #14766 Cambridge, MA

Download references

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Guido Alfani, Maria Antónia Pires de Almeida, Inês Amorim, Alda Azevedo, Raquel Berredo, Leonor Freire Costa, Rui Esperança, Carlos Faísca, João Ferrão, João Fialho, António Castro Henriques, Bruno Lopes, Filomena Melo, Conceição Andrade Martins, Esteban Niccolini, Álvaro Santos Pereira, Susana Pereira, Amélia Polónia, Isabel dos Guimarães Sá, João Paulo Salvado and Ana Margarida Silva, as well as the organisers and participants of the Economic History Society Conference, in Oxford, March 2012, the 3rd Einite Workshop on Economic Inequality in Southern Europe (Milan, Bocconi University, June 2015) and the Economic Inequality in Pre-industrial Eurasia session of the XVIIth World Economic History Congress (August 2016, Kyoto). He is especially grateful to Jeffrey G. Williamson and Peter H. Lindert for their encouragement and guidance. He is also indebted to the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia for valuable financial support.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

    Jaime Reis

Authors
  1. Jaime Reis
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jaime Reis.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Reis, J. Deviant behaviour? Inequality in Portugal 1565–1770. Cliometrica 11, 297–319 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11698-016-0152-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11698-016-0152-7

Keywords

JEL Classification

Search

Navigation