This article analyzes a newly constructed individual level dataset of every English death and probate from 1892–1992. This analysis shows that the twentieth century’s “Great Equalization” of wealth stalled in mid-century. The probate rate, which captures the proportion of English holding any significant wealth at death rose from 10 percent in the 1890s to 40 percent by 1950 and has stagnated to 1992. Despite the large declines in the wealth share of the top 1 percent, from 73 to 20 percent, the median English individual died with almost nothing throughout. All changes in inequality after 1950 involve a reshuffling of wealth within the top 30 percent. I translate the individual level data to synthetic households; the majority have at least one member probated. Yet the bottom 60 percent of households hold only 12 percent of all wealth, at their peak wealth-holding level, in the early 1990s. I also compare the new wealth data with existing estimates of top wealth shares, home-ownership trends, wealth survey distributions, aggregate wealth, and the wealth Gini coefficient.

中文翻译：

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中产阶级在哪里？来自 1892-1992 年 6000 万份英国死亡和遗嘱认证记录的证据

本文分析了 1892 年至 1992 年间每个英国死亡和遗嘱认证的新构建的个人级别数据集。这一分析表明，二十世纪的财富“大均等化”在本世纪中叶停滞不前。遗嘱认证率反映了英国人在去世时持有任何重大财富的比例，从 1890 年代的 10% 上升到 1950 年的 40%，并一直停滞到 1992 年。尽管前 1% 的财富份额大幅下降，从 73到 20%，中位数的英国人在整个过程中几乎一无所有。1950 年之后不平等的所有变化都涉及到前 30% 的财富重新洗牌。我将个人层面的数据转化为综合家庭；大多数人至少有一名成员经过认证。然而，底层 60% 的家庭只拥有全部财富的 12%，在 1990 年代初期，他们的财富持有水平达到顶峰。我还将新的财富数据与对顶级财富份额、房屋所有权趋势、财富调查分布、总财富和财富基尼系数的现有估计值进行了比较。