Regional Income Distributions in France, 1960–2018

This paper proposes homogeneous annual series on the income distribution of Frenchmetropolitan départements for the period 1960-69 and 1986-2018. We rely on unpublishedand newly digitised archives of the French Ministry of Finance. They consist of fiscaltabulations that are a summary of households’ income tax declarations. Based on these rawsources, we interpolate the whole income distribution of French metropolitandépartements after 1986. Before 1986, we need more assumptions as only households liableto French income tax filed income tax declarations at that time. We propose amethodology to estimate the number and average income of non-taxable householdsbefore 1986 that also allows us to reconstruct the income distribution of Frenchmetropolitan départements for the period 1960-69