IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/6259.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Global income inequality by the numbers : in history and now --an overview--

Author

Listed:
  • Milanovic, Branko

Abstract

The paper presents an overview of calculations of global inequality, recently and over the long-run as well as main controversies and political and philosophical implications of the findings. It focuses in particular on the winners and losers of the most recent episode of globalization, from 1988 to 2008. It suggests that the period might have witnessed the first decline in global inequality between world citizens since the Industrial Revolution. The decline however can be sustained only if countries'mean incomes continue to converge (as they have been doing during the past ten years) and if internal (within-country) inequalities, which are already high, are kept in check. Mean-income convergence would also reduce the huge"citizenship premium"that is enjoyed today by the citizens of rich countries.

Suggested Citation

  • Milanovic, Branko, 2012. "Global income inequality by the numbers : in history and now --an overview--," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6259, The World Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:6259
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2012/11/06/000158349_20121106085546/Rendered/PDF/wps6259.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Angus Deaton, 2005. "Measuring Poverty in a Growing World (or Measuring Growth in a Poor World)," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(1), pages 1-19, February.
    2. Maddison, Angus, 2007. "Contours of the World Economy 1-2030 AD: Essays in Macro-Economic History," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199227204.
    3. Sudhir Anand & Paul Segal, 2008. "What Do We Know about Global Income Inequality?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 46(1), pages 57-94, March.
    4. Anton Korinek & Johan Mistiaen & Martin Ravallion, 2006. "Survey nonresponse and the distribution of income," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 4(1), pages 33-55, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Is inequality good or bad?
      by Johan Fourie in Johan Fourie's Blog on 2014-02-18 01:11:13

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rahul Lahoti & Arjun Jayadev & Sanjay G. Reddy, 2014. "The Global Consumption and Income Project (GCIP): An Introduction and Preliminary Findings," LIS Working papers 621, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    2. Arjun Jayadev & Rahul Lahoti & Sanjay G. Reddy, 2015. "Who got what, then and now? A Fifty Year Overview from the Global Consumption and Income Project," Courant Research Centre: Poverty, Equity and Growth - Discussion Papers 174, Courant Research Centre PEG.
    3. Jomo, K. & Popov, V., 2016. "Long-Term Trends in Income Distribution," Journal of the New Economic Association, New Economic Association, vol. 31(3), pages 146-160.
    4. Hassine, Nadia Belhaj, 2015. "Economic Inequality in the Arab Region," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 532-556.
    5. Hartmann, Dominik & Guevara, Miguel R. & Jara-Figueroa, Cristian & Aristarán, Manuel & Hidalgo, César A., 2017. "Linking Economic Complexity, Institutions, and Income Inequality," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 75-93.
    6. Lahoti Rahul & Jayadev Arjun & Reddy Sanjay, 2016. "The Global Consumption and Income Project (GCIP): An Overview," Journal of Globalization and Development, De Gruyter, vol. 7(1), pages 61-108, June.
    7. Peter Edward & Andy Sumner, 2013. "Inequality from a global perspective: An alternative approach," Working Papers 302, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    8. Rahul Lahoti & Arjun Jayadev & Sanjay G. Reddy, 2016. "The Global Consumption and Income Project (GCIP): An Overview," LIS Working papers 655, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    9. repec:epa:cepawp:2014-10 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Gevorkyan, Aleksandr V., 2015. "The legends of the Caucasus: Economic transformation of Armenia and Georgia," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 24(6), pages 1009-1024.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Inequality; Poverty Impact Evaluation; Services&Transfers to Poor; Equity and Development; Income;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:6259. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Roula I. Yazigi). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.html .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.