Why a rise in wealth ownership did not accompany growth ?

This paper studies private individual wealth in France and its distribution during the nineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries based on individual data of bequests collected from all over France. We focus on the distinction between those who died rich (with an estate) and those who left nothing behind. Over the entire period, about 60 percent of the adults who died left a positive estate, but this proportion decreased over time. We suggest that this downward trend in asset ownership cannot only be explained by a simple compositional effect due to urbanization and/or industrialization. In addition to these phenomena, longer life expectancy also induced changes in life-cycle patterns with the need for children to finance their parents’ older years at the expense of their bequests. These changes were amplified by the diffusion of pension schemes and life insurance plans.