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Decomposing World Income Distribution: Does the World Have a Middle Class?

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Author Info
Milanovic, Branko
Yitzhaki, Shlomo

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Abstract

Using the national income/expenditure distribution data from 111 countries, we decompose total inequality between the individuals in the world, by continents and regions. We use Yitzhaki's Gini decomposition which allows for an exact breakdown of the Gini. We find that Asia is the most heterogeneous continent; between-country inequality is much more important than inequality in incomes within countries. At the other extreme is Latin America where differences between the countries are small, but inequalities within the countries are large. Western Europe/North America is fairly homogeneous both in terms of countries' mean incomes and income differences between individuals. If we divide the world population into three groups: the rich (those with incomes greater than Italy's mean income), the poor (those with incomes less than Western countries' poverty line), and the middle class, we find that there are only 11 percent of people who are "world middle class"; 78 percent are poor, and 11 percent are rich. Copyright 2002 by The International Association for Research in Income and Wealth.

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Article provided by Blackwell Publishing in its journal Review of Income & Wealth.

Volume (Year): 48 (2002)
Issue (Month): 2 (June)
Pages: 155-78
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Handle: RePEc:bla:revinw:v:48:y:2002:i:2:p:155-78

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Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Mookherjee, Dilip & Shorrocks, Anthony F, 1982. "A Decomposition Analysis of the Trend in UK Income Inequality," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 92(368), pages 886-902, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Chotikapanich, Duangkamon & Valenzuela, Rebecca & Rao, D S Prasada, 1997. "Global and Regional Inequality in the Distribution of Income: Estimation with Limited and Incomplete Data," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 22(4), pages 533-46.
  3. T. Paul Schultz, 1998. "Inequality in the Distribution of Personal Income in the World: How it is Changing and Why," Working Papers 784, Economic Growth Center, Yale University.
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  4. Yitzhaki, Shlomo, 1982. "Relative deprivation and economic welfare," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 99-113. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Lerman, Robert I. & Yitzhaki, Shlomo, 1984. "A note on the calculation and interpretation of the Gini index," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 15(3-4), pages 363-368. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Pyatt, Graham, 1976. "On the Interpretation and Disaggregation of Gini Coefficients," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 86(342), pages 243-55, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Yitzhaki, Shlomo, 1994. "Economic distance and overlapping of distributions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 147-159, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  8. Silber, Jacques, 1989. "Factor Components, Population Subgroups and the Computation of the Gini Index of Inequality," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 71(1), pages 107-15, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Shorrocks, Anthony F, 1984. "Inequality Decomposition by Population Subgroups," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(6), pages 1369-85, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  10. Dagum, Camilo, 1980. "Inequality Measures between Income Distributions with Applications," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(7), pages 1791-1803, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Heshmati, Almas, 2004. "Continental and Sub-Continental Income Inequality," IZA Discussion Papers 1271, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  2. Stéphane Mussard & Françoise Seyte & Michel Terraza, 2006. "La décomposition de l’indicateur de Gini en sous-groupes : une revue de la littérature," Cahiers de recherche 06-11, Departement d'Economique de la Faculte d'administration à l'Universite de Sherbrooke. [Downloadable!]
  3. Shlomo Yitzhaki & Edna Schechtman, 2009. "The “melting pot”: A success story?," Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer, vol. 7(2), pages 137-151, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Peter J. Lambert & Andre Decoster, 2004. "The Gini Coefficient Reveals More," University of Oregon Economics Department Working Papers 2004-18, University of Oregon Economics Department, revised 05 Dec 2004. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  5. Bussolo, Maurizio & De Hoyos, Rafael E. & Medvedev, Denis, 2008. "Is the developing world catching up ? global convergence and national rising dispersion," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4733, The World Bank. [Downloadable!]
  6. You, Jong-Sung & Khagram, Sanjeev, 2004. "Inequality and Corruption," Working Paper Series rwp04-001, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government. [Downloadable!]
  7. Essama-Nssah, B., 2002. "Assessing the distributional impact of public policy," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2883, The World Bank. [Downloadable!]
  8. Bussolo, Maurizio & De Hoyos, Rafael E. & Medvedev, Denis & van der Mensbrugghe, Dominique, 2008. "Global Growth and Distribution: Are China and India Reshaping the World?," Working Papers RP2008/29, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER). [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  9. Heshmati, Almas, 2004. "The World Distribution of Income and Income Inequality," IZA Discussion Papers 1267, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
  10. Shlomo Yitzhaki, 2003. "Gini’s Mean difference: a superior measure of variability for non-normal distributions," Metron - International Journal of Statistics, Dipartimento di Statistica, Probabilità e Statistiche Applicate - University of Rome, vol. 0(2), pages 285-316. [Downloadable!]
  11. Aisling J. Reynolds-Feighan, 2007. "Carrier Network Structures and the Spatial Distribution of Air Traffic in the European Air Transport Market, 1996-2006," Rivista di Politica Economica, SIPI Spa, vol. 97(1), pages 243-, January-F. [Downloadable!]
  12. Michael Beenstock, 2008. "Deconstructing the Sibling Correlation: How Families Increase Inequality," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 29(3), pages 325-345, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  13. Heshmati, Almas, 2004. "Regional Income Inequality in Selected Large Countries," IZA Discussion Papers 1307, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
  14. Edward N. Wolff & Ajit Zacharias, 2007. "Class Structure and Economic Inequality," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_487, Levy Economics Institute, The. [Downloadable!]
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