DT 18/21 - Wealth inequality in colonial Hispanic-America: Montevideo in the late 18th century

There has recently been renewed interest in pre-industrial inequality among economic historians, but there are still few case studies about wealth inequality in pre-industrial Latin America, particularly involving colonial Spanish America before 1820. This paper presents a study of wealth inequality in Montevideo, an area of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, in the late colonial period. The work addresses the level of wealth inequality, the composition of wealth, and its relationship with social structure in Montevideo in the late 18th century. It uses a dataset of probate inventories and population records as the main sources, estimates a Gini index, and presents a stylized picture of the social structure, analyzing the differences in wealth between social groups in 1772-1773. The main finding is that wealth inequality in Montevideo was similar to that of the English colonies of North America in 1774, and to the less unequal pre-industrial economies in Europe at the same time. Although most of society formed a relatively wealthy middle class, however, some important assets were strongly concentrated at the top of society.