Globalizing Inequality: ‘Centrifugal’ and ‘Centripetal’ Forces at Work
Abstract
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.Download Info
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Paper provided by United Nations, Department of Economics and Social Affairs in its series Working Papers with number 35.
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Length: 26 pages
Date of creation: Sep 2006
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Handle: RePEc:une:wpaper:35
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Related research
Keywords: economic development; structural change; comparative studies; development policy;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
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2006-12-16 (All new papers)
- NEP-DEV-2006-12-16 (Development)
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Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Milanovic, Branko & Ersado, Lire, 2008.
"Reform and inequality during the transition: An analysis using panel household survey data, 1990-2005,"
MPRA Paper
7459, University Library of Munich, Germany.
- Milanovic, Branko & Ersado, Lire, 2008. "Reform and Inequality during the Transition: An Analysis Using Panel Household Survey Data, 1990-2005," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4780, The World Bank.
- Milanovic, Branko & Ersado, Lire, 2010. "Reform and Inequality during the Transition: An Analysis Using Panel Houshold Survey Data, 1990-2006," Working Papers wp2010-62, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
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