This paper reassesses national income inequalities in this era of globalization. The main conclusion is that two opposite forces are at work: one ‘centrifugal’ at the two extremes of the distribution—increasing the disparity of income shares appropriated by the top and by the bottom four deciles across countries; and the other ‘centripetal’ in the middle—increasing the uniformity of the share of income going to deciles 5 to 9. Therefore, globalization is creating a situation where virtually all the intercountry diversity of income distribution is the result of differences in what the rich and the poor get in each country.
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Paper provided by United Nations, Department of Economics and Social Affairs in its series Working Papers with number
35.
Find related papers by JEL classification: D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement F - International Economics J3 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs O1 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development
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