Top Indian wealth shares and inheritances 1966–1985

Between 1953 and 1985, India implemented various progressive taxes on personal wealth.I use estate tax returns to compute top wealth shares (top 1%, top 0.1%, and top 0.01%) over 1966–1985; a period marked explicitly by a dirigiste policy environment. These new series suggest that wealth concentration in India reduced substantially during the 1970s. Although the decline affected the entire top 1%, the losses faced by the top 0.01% were especially large.Combined with identical trends in top income shares, it appears that the 1950–1980 expropriations of India’s rich had similarities to institutional transitions and shocks faced by European elites in the early to mid twentieth century.