Examining interrelation between global and national income inequalities

Abstract

The last decade brought increasing attention to income and wealth inequalities in advanced economies because of their increase in several countries and negative social and political implications. However, this debate is often limited to the single-country perspective, disregarding decreasing global income inequalities, i.e. inequalities between individuals in the entire world. This paper focuses mainly on the g lobal dimension of the inequality trends but also tries to update statistics on national inequality trends which, contrary to the dominant narrative, seem to go in various directions depending on a concrete country. Finally, an attempt is made to analyze the potential interrelation and trade-off between decreasing global inequalities and increasing national inequalities and the role of globalization, in its various forms, in such a trade-off.

Inequality and Globalization: A Review Essay

“…A reasonable summary of the evidence would probably be that trade has helped promote growth and poverty reduction in the developing world as a whole, but that is only one of a number of relevant factors, which include aspects of the initial distribution of income and human development. 18 "Trade openness" (usually measured by exports plus imports as a share of GDP) is often a significant predictor of growth rates in pub- 17 See Rosnick (2016), who removes China from the GIC of Lakner and Milanovic (2016a); the elephant is still there, but with some 30 percentage points knocked off its head! 18 Contributions include Dollar and Kraay (2004), Lundberg and Squire (2003) and Berg, Ostry, and Zettelmeyer (2012).…”

“…18 "Trade openness" (usually measured by exports plus imports as a share of GDP) is often a significant predictor of growth rates in pub- 17 See Rosnick (2016), who removes China from the GIC of Lakner and Milanovic (2016a); the elephant is still there, but with some 30 percentage points knocked off its head! 18 Contributions include Dollar and Kraay (2004), Lundberg and Squire (2003) and Berg, Ostry, and Zettelmeyer (2012). For overviews of the arguments and evidence, focusing on developing countries, see Ravallion (2006Ravallion ( , 2016a.…”

Russia and the global economy

“…At the same time, the group of advanced economies (AEs), especially Japan and Western Europe, has grown slower, due to population stagnation or decline. This two-speed economic growth helped to reduce global income inequalities even if national income inequalities increased within a number of large economies, especially in the US (Dabrowski, 2018).…”