Global Income Distribution

From the Fall of the Berlin Wall to the Great Recession

Datos Bibliográficos

ID19947682
AutoresChristoph Lakner (0000-0002-1354-3480, World Bank Group), Branko Milanovic (0000-0002-7906-5696, World Bank Group)
Año2013
Fecha de publicación2013-12-01
Open AccessSí
TipoBOOK
EditorialWorld Bank, Washington, DC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1596/1813-9450-6719
OpenAlexW3122409603
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas52
Referencias citadas32

The paper presents a newly compiled and improved database of national household surveys between 1988 and 2008. In 2008, the global Gini index is around 70.5 percent having declined by approximately 2 Gini points over this twenty year period. When it is adjusted for the likely under-reporting of top incomes in surveys by using the gap between national accounts consumption and survey means in combination with a Pareto-type imputation of the upper tail, the estimate is a much higher global Gini of almost 76 percent. With such an adjustment the downward trend in the Gini almost disappears. Tracking the evolution of individual country-deciles shows the underlying elements that drive the changes in the global distribution: China has graduated from the bottom ranks, modifying the overall shape of the global income distribution in the process and creating an important global "median" class that has transformed a twin-peaked 1988 global distribution into an almost single-peaked one now. The "winners" were country-deciles that in 1988 were around the median of the global income distribution, 90 percent of whom in terms of population are from Asia. The "losers" were the country-deciles that in 1988 were around the 85th percentile of the global income distribution, almost 90 percent of whom in terms of population are from mature economies

Berlin wall · Distribution (mathematics) · Economics · Fall of man · Global recession · Great recession · Income distribution · Inequality · Keynesian economics · Political science · Recession · Economic Theory and Policy · Global Health Care Issues · Income, Poverty, and Inequality · Law · Mathematics