Book Chapter

Income and wealth mobility in the smaller towns of the late medieval and early modern Low Countries: an exploratory analysis

  • Wouter Ronsijn
  • Wouter Ryckbosch

In this paper, we set out to explore trends in mobility levels in six smaller towns in the Low Countries during the late Middle Ages and early modern period. We use pairs of tax lists to divide the population into quintiles and draw up mobility tables. We estimate mobility as the proportion of people moving into a different quintile. We did not find a long-term trend in mobility levels. Mobility levels did fluctuate in the towns we investigate, but we did not find any relation to trends in or levels of population or inequality. Our results suggest that preindustrial urban societies remained fairly rigid. Many people remained either in the top or bottom half of the distribution. It seems particularly people at the top managed to stay at the top.

  • Keywords:
  • Mobility,
  • Inequality,
  • Low Countries,
  • Towns,
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Wouter Ronsijn

Free University of Brussels, Belgium - ORCID: 0000-0001-6582-6418

Wouter Ryckbosch

VUB, Free University of Brussels, Belgium - ORCID: 0000-0003-0269-4950

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  • Publication Year: 2025
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Chapter Information

Chapter Title

Income and wealth mobility in the smaller towns of the late medieval and early modern Low Countries: an exploratory analysis

Authors

Wouter Ronsijn, Wouter Ryckbosch

Language

English

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-0667-9.16

Peer Reviewed

Publication Year

2025

Copyright Information

© 2025 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Bibliographic Information

Book Title

La mobilità sociale nelle società preindustriali: tendenze, cause ed effetti (secc. XIII-XVIII) / Social mobility in pre-industrial societies: tendencies, causes and effects (13th-18th centuries)

Editors

Angela Orlandi

Peer Reviewed

Number of Pages

612

Publication Year

2025

Copyright Information

© 2025 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Publisher Name

Firenze University Press

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-0667-9

ISBN Print

979-12-215-0666-2

eISBN (pdf)

979-12-215-0667-9

eISBN (xml)

979-12-215-0668-6

Series Title

Datini Studies in Economic History

Series ISSN

2975-1241

Series E-ISSN

2975-1195

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