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Wealth and Property Taxation in the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Dray, Sacha
  • Landais, Camille
  • Stantcheva, Stefanie
Abstract
We study the history and geography of wealth accumulation in the US, using newly collected historical property tax records since the early 1800s. The US General Property Tax was a comprehensive tax on all types of property (real, personal, and financial), making it one of the first “wealth taxes.†Drawing on many historical records, we construct long-run, consistent, high-frequency wealth series at the county, state, and national levels. We first document the long-term evolution of household wealth in the US since the early 1800s. The US experienced extraordinary wealth accumulation after the Civil war and until the Great Depression. Second, we reveal that spatial inequality in the US has been large and highly persistent since the mid-1800s, driven mainly by Southern states, whose long-run divergence from the rest of the US predated the Civil War. Before the Civil war, enslaved people were assessed as personal property of the enslavers, representing almost one-half of total taxable property in Southern states. This system is morally abhorrent and implies wrongly counting forced labor income as capital. The regional distribution of wealth and the effects of the Civil war appear very different if enslaved people are not included in the property measure. Third, we investigate the determinants of long-term wealth growth and capital accumulation. Among others, we find that counties with a higher share of enslaved property before the Civil War or higher levels of wealth inequality experienced lower subsequent long-run growth in property.

Suggested Citation

  • Dray, Sacha & Landais, Camille & Stantcheva, Stefanie, 2023. "Wealth and Property Taxation in the United States," CEPR Discussion Papers 18096, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:18096
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    Cited by:

    1. Francis Wong, 2024. "Taxing Homeowners Who Won’t Borrow," CESifo Working Paper Series 11185, CESifo.
    2. Katrine Jakobsen & Henrik Kleven & Jonas Kolsrud & Camille Landais & Mathilde Muñoz, 2024. "Taxing Top Wealth: Migration Responses and their Aggregate Economic Implications," NBER Working Papers 32153, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Löffler, Max & Siegloch, Sebastian, 2015. "Property Taxation, Local Labor Markets and Rental Housing," VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 112967, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    4. Ellora Derenoncourt & Chi Hyun Kim & Moritz Kuhn & Moritz Schularick, 2024. "Changes in the Distribution of Black and White Wealth Since the US Civil War," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2024_507, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Taxation; Wealth tax; Wealth; Inequality; Convergence; Property tax;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E01 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General - - - Measurement and Data on National Income and Product Accounts and Wealth; Environmental Accounts
    • H20 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - General
    • H71 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
    • N31 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - U.S.; Canada: Pre-1913
    • R12 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade (economic geography)
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination

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