The Rich in Argentina over the twentieth century: From the Conservative Republic to the Peronist experience and beyond 1932-2004

This paper presents series on top shares of income in Argentina from 1932 to 2004 based on personal income tax return statistics. Our results suggest that income concentration was higher during the 1930s and the first half of the 1940s than it is today. The recovery of the economy after the Great Depression, favored by the international trade conditions during and after the Second World War, and the visible effects of the peronist policy between 1945 and 1955 generated an inverted U shape in the dynamics of top shares. The peronist redistributive policy, successful and visible, seemed to have proved limited when compared with the central economies. Since then, and after a new upward movement between 1955 and 1959, the top shares seem to have described the U-shape pattern found in the developed English-speaking economies. The levels of concentration in 1953 were very similar to those found in 1997.