The Wealth-Income-Ratio in Switzerland, 1900-2017

Following Piketty (2104), we estimate wealth-to-income ratios for Switzerland over the period 1900-2017. For the most recent period, we find that the national wealth-income ratio in Switzerland has been rising from 494% in 1995 to 747% in 2017. This impressive increase was caused by the strong increase of capital gains in housing wealth since 2010. In addition, we present new historic estimates of the evolution of the private wealth-income ratio between 1900 and 1995. Using new data sources, we find that earlier estimates by Brülhart et al. (2017) underestimated total private wealth prior to the year 2000. This results in a much less dramatic increase in total private wealth over the period 1980-2000, supporting earlier findings of a relatively stable evolution of wealth and income inequality in Switzerland over the past century.