This article examines the composition of Britain's `millionaire’ population during the late 1920s and early 1930s, based on data for living millionaires (in contrast to previous studies, which have focused on wealth at death). Using tabulated data compiled by the Inland Revenue for all persons on incomes over £50,000 per annum, it explores the factor incomes of Britain's millionaire population and their main sources of income, by sector. It then analyses a unique individual-level data set of British millionaires, compiled by the Inland Revenue for the 1928/9 tax year, to show their sectoral and geographical composition. Most millionaires are shown to be `businesspeople’ rather than rentiers, while landed millionaires represented only a small proportion of the total. Businesspeople millionaires are shown to be disproportionately active in a relatively narrow range of sectors, the common characteristic of which was the potential to generate abnormal profits, mainly through cartelization or amalgamation. Thus, rather than revealing the sectors most important to national wealth, or competitive advantage, the clustering of millionaires primarily reflects rising barriers to competition in interwar Britain and the abnormal profits they generated.

中文翻译：

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英国两次世界大战期间超级富豪的剖析：重建 1928/9 年的“百万富翁”人口†

本文根据在世百万富翁的数据（与之前的研究侧重于死亡时的财富），研究了 1920 年代末和 1930 年代初英国“百万富翁”人口的构成。使用由税务局为所有年收入超过 50,000 英镑的所有人编制的表格数据，它按部门探讨了英国百万富翁人口的要素收入及其主要收入来源。然后，它分析了英国内陆税收局为 1928/9 纳税年度编制的英国百万富翁的独特个人层面数据集，以显示他们的部门和地域构成。大多数百万富翁被证明是“商人”而不是食利者，而有地的百万富翁只占总数的一小部分。商人百万富翁被证明在相对狭窄的行业范围内异常活跃，其共同特征是有可能产生异常利润，主要是通过卡特尔化或合并。因此，百万富翁的聚集不是揭示对国家财富或竞争优势最重要的部门，而是主要反映了两次世界大战期间英国竞争壁垒的增加及其产生的异常利润。