Detailed information about the distribution of estates left at death has commonly served as the basis for the estimation of wealth distributions among the living via the mortality multiplier method. The application of detailed mortality rates by demographics and other determinants of mortality...

Despite its relevance in 19th-century economics, wealth -its accumulation, composition, and distribution- has largely been neglected in Italian economic history. Filling this gap, we show that between the late 19th and mid-20th centuries, Italy presented a historically high value of total...