Replication Data for: Do Inheritance Customs Affect Political and Social Inequality

Abstract

Why are some societies more unequal than others? The French revolutionaries believed unequal inheritances among siblings to be responsible for the strict hierarchies of the Ancien Regime. To achieve equality, the revolutionaries therefore enforced equal inheritance rights. Their goal was to empower women and to disenfranchise the noble class. But, do equal inheritances succeed in leveling the societal playing field? We study Germany — a country with pronounced local-level variation in inheritance customs — and find that municipalities that historically equally apportioned wealth, to this day, elect more women into political councils and have fewer aristocrats in the social elite. Using historic data, we point to two mechanisms: wealth equality and pro-egalitarian preferences. In a final step, we also show that, counterintuitively, equitable inheritance positively predicts income inequality. We interpret this finding to mean that equitable inheritance levels the playing field by rewarding talent, not status.