Concretely, the top decile of the income hierarchy received about 25 percent of national income in the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia in the 1970s and 1980s (it was 30 percent in Germany and France at that time and is more than 35 percent now). In more inegalitarian societies, the top decile claimed as much as 50 percent of national income (with about 20 percent going to the top centile). This was true in France and Britain during the Ancien Régime as well as the Belle Époque and is true in the United States today.
