Les hauts revenus français au XXe siècle: Inégalités et redistributions, 1901-1998

by Thomas Piketty

Né en 1971, Thomas Piketty est ancien élève de l'Ecole Normale Supérieure, docteur de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales et chercheur en économie au CNRS. Ancien professeur au département d'Economie du Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), il est également membre du Conseil d'Analyse Economique du Premier Ministre. Le Livre : La question des inégalités est au coeur de la vie politique française. On a dit et écrit tout et son contraire sur ce sujet. La somme proposée ici sera, sans conteste, l'ouvrage de référence sur la question. Ce livre dresse le tableau d'un siècle d'inégalités. Il montre que, contrairement à une idée reçue, l'inégalité des salaires et restée sensiblement la même en France tout au long du XXème siècle : le pouvoir d'achat a été multiplié par 5, mais la hiérarchie n'a pratiquement pas changé. L'inégalité totale des revenus a fortement diminué au cours des années 1914-1945, mais cette baisse est due pour l'essentiel aux chocs subis par les revenus du capital (destructions, inflation, crise des années 1930), et non pas à un processus économique « naturel ». La concentration des fortunes et des revenus du capital n'a par la suite jamais retrouvé le niveau astronomique qui était le sien à la veille de la première guerre mondiale, ce qui semble s'expliquer par l'impact de l'impôt progressif sur l'accumulation et la reconstitution de patrimoines importants. En l'absence de ces chocs et de l'impôt progressif, il est probable que la France n'aurait pas quitté de sitôt le sommet inégalitaire du début du siècle. Thomas Piketty, qui se fonde notamment sur une exploitation systématique de sources fiscales permettant de couvrir l'ensemble du siècle (déclarations de revenus, de salaires et de successions), analyse également comment les perceptions de ces inégalités ont évolué de 1901 à 1998 (« fin des rentiers », « montée des cadres », etc..). La question des inégalités apparaît alors comme une véritable grille de lecture de l'histoire générale de la France au XXème siècle.

907 pages, Paperback

First published September 5, 2001

About the author

Thomas Piketty (French: [tɔma pikɛti]; born May 7, 1971) is a French economist who works on wealth and income inequality. He is the director of studies at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) and professor at the Paris School of Economics. He is the author of the best selling book Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013), which emphasizes the themes of his work on wealth concentrations and distribution over the past 250 years. The book argues that the rate of capital return in developed countries is persistently greater than the rate of economic growth, and that this will cause wealth inequality to increase in the future. To address this problem, he proposes redistribution through a global tax on wealth.

Piketty was born on May 7, 1971, in the Parisian suburb of Clichy. He gained a C-stream (scientific) Baccalauréat, and after taking scientific preparatory classes, he entered the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) at the age of 18, where he studied mathematics and economics. At the age of 22, Piketty was awarded his Ph.D. for a thesis on wealth redistribution, which he wrote at the EHESS and the London School of Economics under Roger Guesnerie.

After earning his PhD, Piketty taught from 1993 to 1995 as an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1995, he joined the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) as a researcher, and in 2000 he became director of studies at EHESS.

Piketty won the 2002 prize for the best young economist in France, and according to a list dated November 11, 2003, he is a member of the scientific orientation board of the association "À gauche, en Europe", founded by Michel Rocard and Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

In 2006 Piketty became the first head of the Paris School of Economics, which he helped set up. He left after a few months to serve as an economic advisor to Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal during the French presidential campaign. Piketty resumed teaching at the Paris School of Economics in 2007.

He is a columnist for the French newspaper Libération, and occasionally writes op-eds for Le Monde.

In April 2012, Piketty co-authored along with 42 colleagues an open letter in support of then-PS candidate for the French presidency François Hollande. Hollande won the contest against the incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy in May of that year.

In 2013, Piketty won the biennial Yrjö Jahnsson Award, for the economist under age 45 who has "made a contribution in theoretical and applied research that is significant to the study of economics in Europe."

Piketty specializes in economic inequality, taking a historic and statistical approach. His work looks at the rate of capital accumulation in relation to economic growth over a two hundred year spread from the nineteenth century to the present. His novel use of tax records enabled him to gather data on the very top economic elite, who had previously been understudied, and to ascertain their rate of accumulation of wealth and how this compared to the rest of society and economy. His most recent book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, relies on economic data going back 250 years to show that an ever-rising concentration of wealth is not self-correcting. To address this problem, he proposes redistribution through a global tax on wealth.

Reviews

[Daniel Adrián · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excelente

[Lou · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pas facile d'accès mais certainement le meilleur livre sur le sujet.