Income and inequality in a pre-industrial economy: Genoa at the end of the golden century

This essay constitutes a cross-section of a work of upcoming publication which aims to trace a macroeconomic profile of the Republic of Genoa in 1629 by representing its qualifying traits into a matrix model, for the first time applied to the historical analysis. This study proposes an in-depth analysis of the profiles of the distribution of income from work and the boundaries of the fluctuating area of poverty within the city at the sunset of the period of maximum economic and financial prosperity in its history. The study starts from a detailed profiling of the Genoese population and proposes a comparison with Wales & England in the late seventeenth century and with the first censuses of the Reign of Italy. Through the elaboration of a socio-demographic stratification and reconstructing the contribution of each economic sector to the production of the labour income, this survey attempts to segment as many homogeneous groups of individuals with similar socio-economic profiles, representing the “n” factors into which the income generated can be broken down. Finally, the article proposes some concentration indexes and a synoptic table regarding the population in poverty to propose a measurement of existing inequalities at the end of a century of prosperity.