Almost perfect inequality: long-run evidence on wealth distribution from the Danish West Indies 1760–1914

Abstract It has been proposed that slave societies were the most unequal societies in recorded human history. What little previous evidence there is shows an ambiguous picture, with levels of wealth inequality not necessarily higher than in non-slave societies. Our study contributes to the literature by studying wealth distribution and by estimating the first long-run wealth inequality levels for the Caribbean region, focussing upon the island of St. Croix. The study relies on individual-level data for the whole population from the largest comparable historical dataset from the Global South so far assembled. Our results show a distribution of wealth shockingly close to perfect inequality, that also are highly persistent over the long run. We find that demographic and institutional factors were the drivers of such extreme inequality.