More precisely: we find that capital’s share of income was on the order of 35–40 percent in both Britain and France in the late eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth, before falling to 20–25 percent in the middle of the twentieth century and then rising again to 25–30 percent in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries (see Figures 6.1 and 6.2). This corresponds to an average rate of return on capital of around 5–6 percent in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, rising to 7–8 percent in the mid-twentieth century, and then falling to 4–5 percent in the late twentieth
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