On Analyzing the World Distribution of Income

Abstract

Consideration of world inequality should cause reexamination of the key concepts underlying the welfare approach to measuring income inequality and its relation to measuring poverty. This reexamination leads to exploration of a new measure that allows poverty and inequality to be considered in the same framework, incorporates different approaches to measuring inequality, and allows varied expressions of the cost of inequality. Applied to the world distribution of income for 1820-1992, the new measure provides different perspectives on the evolution of global inequality. JEL codes: D31, C80

Tracking positive and negative effects of inequality on long-run growth

“…These adjusted coefficients have previously been used by us as well as by other authors (e.g. Atkinson and Brandolini 2010). We relied on income, rather than land or wealth, inequality, because it is income distribution that possibly reflects two distinct sources of inequality, namely inequality of opportunities and inequality of returns, which influence economic growth in opposite directions (Neves and Silva 2013).…”

Accomplishments and impact of the NGO, Island Conservation, over 15 years (1994–2009)

“…The average cost for all of Island Conservation's accomplishments is likely higher due to the relatively high costs of conducting conservation actions in the US and the startup costs of developing programs in new regions outside of Mexico and California. However, average long-term costs in other parts of the world may be of the same order of magnitude as those for Mexico because it is a middle-income country with relatively high levels of insular biodiversity (Atkinson and Brandolin 2010;Myers et al 2000).…”

Global trends in relative and absolute income inequality

“…With regard to absolute global inequality, the three papers with these estimates unanimously report a sharp increase in inequality. Atkinson and Brandolini (2010) find that the absolute Gini coefficient increased strongly throughout the period 1820-1992 (with an especially sharp increase after 1950), while Anand and Segal (2015) report that this strong growth continued between 1992 and 2005. The most recent data presented by Goda and Torres García (2016) confirm these findings (Figure 10).…”

“…1 Various surveys show that people refer to both absolute and relative income differences when they talk about inequality (Ballano and Ruiz-Castillo, 1993;Harrison and Seidel, 1994;Amiel and Cowell, 1999), which might explain the conflicting assessments about the distributional outcomes of globalization. Depending on whether people have a "relative" or "absolute" inequality view, they claim that globalization leads to rising or declining income inequality around the globe (Ravallion, 2004;Atkinson and Brandolini, 2010).…”