Wealth Inequalities and Population Dynamics in Early Modern Northern Italy

An analysis of the wealth and population of early modern Ivrea-based on the estimi, or property tax, records; the correzioni degli estimi, a continuous series of tax records rarely found elsewhere and hardly ever used before; the census of 1613, another unique and informative Source; and other archival records-finds that the city's concentration and distribution of wealth was resilient even in face of acute demographical shocks (such as the plague of 1630) and that inequalities in property under-went a slow increase even in economically stagnant areas during the seventeenth century. The article places these findings in a European perspective, and it debates Jan van Zanden's hypothesis of a positive relationship between inequality in wealth and demographical/economic growth before the Industrial Revolution.