Trends
Economic inequality tends to increase over time as a country develops, and to decrease as a certain average income is attained. This trend is commonly known as the Kuznets curve after Simon Kuznets. However, many prominent economists disagree with the need for inequality to increase as a country develops.
There are two ways of looking at income inequality, within country inequality (intra-country inequality) - which is inequality within a nation; or between country inequality (inter-country inequality) which is inequality between countries.
According to intra-country inequality at least in the OECD countries, a May 2011 report by OECD stated that the gap between rich and poor within OECD countries (most of which are "high income" economies) "has reached its highest level for over over 30 years, and governments must act quickly to tackle inequality".
Furthermore, increased inter-country income inequality over a long period is conclusive, with the Gini coefficient (using PPP exchange rate, unweighted by population) more than doubling between 1820 and the 1980s from .20 to .52 (Nolan 2009:63). However, scholars disagree about whether inter-country income inequality has increased (Milanovic 2011), remained relatively stable (Bourguignon and Morrison 2002), or decreased (Sala-i-Martin, 2002) since 1980. What Milanovic (2005) calls the “mother of all inequality disputes” emphasizes this debate by using the same data on Gini coefficient from 1950-2000 and showing that when countries’ GDP per capita incomes are unweighted by population income inequality increases, but when they are weighted inequality decreases. This has much to do with the recent average income rise in China and to some extent India, who represent almost two-fifths of the world. Notwithstanding, inter-country inequality is significant, for instance as a group the bottom 5% of US income distribution receives more income than over 68 percent of the world, and of the 60 million people that make up the top 1% of income distribution, 50 million of them are citizens of Western Europe, North America or Oceania (Milanovic 2011:116,156).
In a TED presentation shown here, Hans Rosling presented the distribution and change in income distribution of various nations over the course of a few decades along with other factors such as child survival and fertility rate.
Read more about this topic: Income Distribution
Famous quotes containing the word trends:
“Power-worship blurs political judgement because it leads, almost unavoidably, to the belief that present trends will continue. Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“Thanks to recent trends in the theory of knowledge, history is now better aware of its own worth and unassailability than it formerly was. It is precisely in its inexact character, in the fact that it can never be normative and does not have to be, that its security lies.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“A point has been reached where the peoples of the Americas must take cognizance of growing ill-will, of marked trends toward aggression, of increasing armaments, of shortening tempers—a situation which has in it many of the elements that lead to the tragedy of general war.... Peace is threatened by those who seek selfish power.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)