8 
amount of wealth and to other factors which are in a wider 
sense "inherited". In this way we can link the income to a 
suitable state variable which is evolving in a long run 
process through the generations. By following such a path 
we shall also be able to answer the question why income 
distribution is apparently relatively stable although so 
many elements relevant to it are changing day by day; the 
explanation is that the stability lies in the distribution 
of wealth, education, training etc which change only 
slowly. 
In the present paper we shall confine ourselves to the 
consideration of wealth and thus consider only the income 
of the wealthy. 4 
The dependence of income on wealth. 
In the following we shall initially consider the income 
of the wealthy as flowing from wealth. They have,of 
course,not only unearned but also earned income, and the 
two are not easy to distinguish even apart from lack of 
suitable data. But as a first step we may pretend that all 
their income is interest or profit. 
Instead of a matrix of income transitions we have now to 
consider a matrix wealth-income,which shows for each 
amount of wealth the corresponding probability of 
different incomes. The basis of the analysis is thus the