A key aspect defining the contemporary income distribution is the (increasing) share the top holds compared to the rest. This paper shows that income concentration increases towards the very top of the distribution, while the shares the middle-and upper-middle-income groups hold, remain stable across countries and over time. Traditional indicators less sensitive to changes at the extremes of the distribution might obscure inequality's actual dimension, and thus help perpetuate it. To avoid this, the ratio of the income share of the top 5 per cent over that of the bottom 40 per cent, denominated Palma v.2, could function as a complementary indicator for the measurement of inequality.

A key aspect defining the contemporary income distribution is the (increasing) share the top holds compared to the rest. This paper shows that income concentration increases towards the very top of the distribution, while the shares the middle-and upper-middle-income groups hold, remain stable across countries and over time. Traditional indicators less sensitive to changes at the extremes of the distribution might obscure inequality's actual dimension, and thus help perpetuate it. To avoid this, the ratio of the income share of the top 5 per cent over that of the bottom 40 per cent, denominated Palma v.2, could function as a complementary indicator for the measurement of inequality.

This paper examines the evolution of economic inequality in Mexico in the last three decades, both in terms of the personal distribution and the functional distribution of income, partly exploring the question of how much of its evolution is determined by economic or social policies. The second purpose of our paper is to analyze the relation between the evolution of the functional distribution of income and labor policy, with special emphasis on minimum wage policy. Finally our third objective, closely linked to the previous two, is the examination of the institutional context as well as the ideological and political economy considerations that have marked minimum wage policy in Mexico in view of the successful attempt to bring the debate back to the forefront of the political agenda. As such, our analysis will pay special attention to events since May 1st 2014, when the Chief of the Government of Mexico City launched a national discussion on the urgent need, ways and means to renovate minimum wage policy in Mexico. In our view, this debate is perhaps the only recent expression in Mexico of the current re-found concerted focus on inequality on a global scale, an expression that has woken up fierce opposition from key sectors of the Mexican elite and highly placed government officers in the current administration.

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portions of the central highlands and southern Amazon to mining, despite protests from local Shuar communities (some of whom were displaced to make way for two large-scale mines).Reality of Dreams is a tour de force, and an essential text for anyone trying to make sense of Correa's Ecuador (I recommend reading it alongside Carmen Martínez Novo's outstanding Undoing Multiculturalism (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021)). Though it is grounded in critical theoryranging from Marx and Foucault to Freud and Lacanit is empirically rich and highly readable, with lively, engaging prose. Ultimately, what emerges from Reality of Dreams is a picture of the Correa administration as hubristic, performative and incompetent. In the flowery discourse of the Citizens' Revolution, the 'socialism of buen vivir' was a utopia that 'allows us to walk … in an emancipatory direction toward the transformation of existing social relations', the 'egalitarian redistribution of resources', and the 'inclusive participation of the indigenous peoples' (quoted on pp. 3-4). But as one critic wryly commented, 'Lo que digas es fantástico, y lo que hagas es una cagada' ('What you say is fantastic, and what you do is a piece of shit', quoted on p. 173).