The way income is distributed in an economy is perhaps the most notable result of its growth patterns. Understanding the joint persistence of economic crises and changes in social inequality since 1929 is considered a great challenge. This paper tries to analyze growth and income distribution in the long run using the concept of long waves, the evolutionary concept of ‘systems’, and empirical information. We conjecture that the social system is in turn an outcome of the co-evolution of four partially autonomous subdomains: (i) technology, characterized by a paradigm whose evolution follows the shape of a ‘Schumpeterian boom’; (ii) the economy or productive system, essentially defined as the succession of intermediate-length fluctuations in investments, and strongly associated to sectoral and structural changes; (iii) science, which contributes to development by generating innovations; and (iv) institutions, which set the rules in which income distribution is framed. Following this scheme, the data reveal that income distribution is an emerging result from this ‘global social system’ and not only the result of economic productivity and technology; apparently, the weight in the income distribution of institutional factors is as relevant as economic and technological factors. Second, the long-run growth trends are most possibly non-linear and, to great extent, non-deterministic, which would support the representation of long-run phenomena as long waves. Finally, we have found that in the long period 1929–2010 and afterwards, two sub-periods are manifested, with very different regimes of income distribution: (1) 1929–1975, when inequality decreased, and (2) from 1975 to present time, when inequality increased. Concerning the years after 2010, two alternatives follow: either these correspond to the recovery phase of a new long wave, or to the end of the depression phase of our second period. In both cases, we are currently moving towards the expansionary phase of a new long wave, which will have important implications for contemporary economic policies.

一个经济体的收入分配方式也许是其增长模式最显着的结果。理解自 1929 年以来经济危机和社会不平等变化的共同持续被认为是一项巨大的挑战。本文试图利用长波的概念、“系统”的演化概念和经验信息来分析长期的增长和收入分配。我们推测，社会系统反过来是四个部分自治子领域共同进化的结果：（i）技术，其特征是其演变遵循“熊彼特繁荣”形状的范式； (ii) 经济或生产体系，本质上被定义为连续的中等长度投资波动，与部门和结构变化密切相关； ㈢ 科学，通过产生创新促进发展； (iv) 制定收入分配规则的机构。按照这一方案，数据揭示了收入分配是这一“全球社会体系”的新兴结果，而不仅仅是经济生产力和技术的结果；显然，制度因素在收入分配中的权重与经济和技术因素一样相关。其次，长期增长趋势很可能是非线性的，并且在很大程度上是不确定的，这支持将长期现象表示为长波。最后，我们发现，在1929年至2010年及其后的漫长时期内，表现出两个收入分配制度截然不同的子时期：（1）1929年至1975年，不平等现象减少；（2）从1975年至今当不平等加剧的时候。关于2010年之后的几年，有两种选择：要么对应新长波的恢复阶段，要么对应第二个时期的萧条阶段的结束。在这两种情况下，我们目前都正在走向新长波的扩张阶段，这将对当代经济政策产生重要影响。