Inequality among the poor of eighteenth century Amsterdam

This paper examines nearly 1000 poor to middling citizen households from the city of Amsterdam with a view to assessing their place in the larger wealth distribution of the city as preliminarily sketched in the work of Soltow, van Zanden, and others. It utilizes the probate inventories drawn up by the Amsterdam Municipal Orphanage, which when coupled with the marriage, baptism, and burial records of the city archives, allow for the reconstruction of the household circumstances, material, financial, and demographic, of the families associated with the institution. These data yield detailed information about precisely the kind of people who were systematically excluded from the tax registers and financial records which form the basis for our current knowledge about inequality among historical populations. The lower portion of the wealth distribution is described and then linked via housing rental rates to a more complete distribution of the various social classes in the city. Finally, the determinants of inequality within the ranks of the poor are examined and financial assets of even very small amounts are found to be critical in shaping the socio-economic experience of the lower citizenry.     

Wealth accumulation motives: evidence from the probate records of Ontario, 1892 and 1902

The wealth of male decedents using census-linked probate records from 1892 and 1902 is examined for evidence on saving motives. This data presents an opportunity to examine wealth holding and saving motives in an environment devoid of many of the features that can affect modern retirement, consumption and saving decisions. Evidence is found supporting the existence of a strategic bequest motive. This result occurs after controlling for the possibility of the demand for children rising with the level of wealth as well as the potential contribution to wealth accumulation that children made in agricultural economies. These results also suggest that while the presence of a bequest motive was real and significant, its ultimate contribution to wealth accumulation was relatively modest when compared to the impact of variables such as occupational status and literacy. Moreover, there appears to be some evidence supporting a transition in saving motives away from bequest saving and towards greater life cycle saving.