Although not a complete data source

Although not a complete data source, this allows us to get more insights into the interrelationship between income and wealth and how this matters for the long-run evolution of income inequality. The Swedish evidence indicates that the total wealth share held by people in the top income percentile decreased before 1950, in particular in the interwar period. By contrast, the “high-wage” income earners in the P90–95 income fractile increased their wealth share substantially over the same period, mainly in the 1910s and1930s. The natural interpretation of these changes is that wealth as a source of income for the very rich declined in this period while, at the same time, moderately rich groups with high incomes accumulated new wealth. However, the drastic drops in Swedish capital income shares between1930 and 1950 in the entire top decileseen in Figure 7.5 is not mirrored in their relative wealth share. Possibly this could be due to some wealth not being fully covered in taxable wealth because of definitions of the tax code or tax avoidance.