IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/uma/periwp/wp54.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A More or Less Unequal World? World Income Distribution in the 20th Century

Author

Listed:
  • Bob Sutcliffe

Abstract

Statistical studies are hardly needed to prove the existence of immense material inequality between human beings. It is evident to anyone who walks down the street in most major cities or watches a television newscast which jumps from images of famine in Angola to the business or the football transfer news. This article takes the existence of great inequality as given but discusses the various ways in which that inequality can be and is measured and surveys evidence about how inequality on a world scale has evolved during the last century and especially since 1980.

Suggested Citation

  • Bob Sutcliffe, 2002. "A More or Less Unequal World? World Income Distribution in the 20th Century," Working Papers wp54, Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
    • Handle: RePEc:uma:periwp:wp54
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://per.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf/working_papers/working_papers_51-100/WP54.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. A. B. Atkinson, 2001. "A Critique of the Transatlantic Consensus on Rising Income Inequality," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(4), pages 433-452, April.
    2. Chen, Yi Vivian & Heston, Alan & Lipsey, Robert, 2000. "International and interarea comparisons of income, output and prices," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 363-364, December.
    3. repec:bla:worlde:v:24:y:2001:i:4:p:433-452 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Atkinson, A.B. & Brandolini, A., 2000. "Promise and Pitfalls in the Use of 'Secondary' Data -Sets: Income Inequality in OECD Countries," Papers 379, Banca Italia - Servizio di Studi.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Branko Milanovic, 2005. "Global Income Inequality: What It Is And Why It Matters?," HEW 0512001, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Barnett, William A. & Erwin Diewert, W. & Zellner, Arnold, 2011. "Introduction to measurement with theory," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 161(1), pages 1-5, March.
    2. Ark, Bart van, 2000. "Economic growth and labour productivity in Europe: half a century of East-West comparisons," Research Report 00C01, University of Groningen, Research Institute SOM (Systems, Organisations and Management).
    3. Alok Kumar, 2008. "Inflation And The Dispersion Of Real Wages," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 49(2), pages 377-399, May.
    4. Eve Caroli & Mathilde Godard, 2016. "Does job insecurity deteriorate health?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(2), pages 131-147, February.
    5. Francois, Joseph & Rojas-Romagosa, Hugo, 2005. "The Construction and Interpretation of Combined Cross-Section and Time-Series Inequality Datasets," CEPR Discussion Papers 5214, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. Demombynes, Gabriel & Ozler, Berk, 2005. "Crime and local inequality in South Africa," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 265-292, April.
    7. Mr. Alvar Kangur, 2018. "Competitiveness and Wage Bargaining Reform in Italy," IMF Working Papers 2018/061, International Monetary Fund.
    8. N. Gobbin & G. Rayp, 2004. "Income Inequality Data in Growth Empirics: From Cross-Sections to Time Series," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 04/252, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
    9. Robert C. Feenstra & Alan Heston & Marcel P. Timmer & Haiyan Deng, 2009. "Estimating Real Production and Expenditures across Nations: A Proposal for Improving the Penn World Tables," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 91(1), pages 201-212, February.
    10. repec:dgr:rugggd:199941 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. repec:dau:papers:123456789/13646 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Eve Caroli & Mathilde Godard, 2013. "Does Job Insecurity Deteriorate Health ? A Causal Approach for Europe," Working Papers 2013-13, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    13. Cecilia Garcia-Penalosa & Eve Caroli & Philippe Aghion, 1999. "Inequality and Economic Growth: The Perspective of the New Growth Theories," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(4), pages 1615-1660, December.
    14. Ivancic, Lorraine & Erwin Diewert, W. & Fox, Kevin J., 2011. "Scanner data, time aggregation and the construction of price indexes," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 161(1), pages 24-35, March.
    15. Daniele Checchi, 2001. "Education, Inequality and Income Inequality," STICERD - Distributional Analysis Research Programme Papers 52, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    16. Raim, Jaanus, 2005. "Former Soviet Union as the World champion in cheapness," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 333-349, June.
    17. Magne Mogstad, 2007. "Measuring Income Inequality under Restricted Interpersonal Comparability," Discussion Papers 498, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    18. Goodspeed, Timothy J., 2002. "Tax competition and tax structure in open federal economies: Evidence from OECD countries with implications for the European Union," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 357-374, February.
    19. Almas Heshmati, 2006. "Continental And Sub-Continental Income Inequality," The IUP Journal of Applied Economics, IUP Publications, vol. 0(1), pages 7-52, January.
    20. Stephen P. Jenkins & John Micklewright, 2007. "New Directions in the Analysis of Inequality and Poverty," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 700, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    21. Martin Cihak & Tomas Holub, 2005. "Price Convergence in EU-Accession Countries: Evidence from the International Comparison," Economie Internationale, CEPII research center, issue 102, pages 59-82.
    22. Cecilia Garcia Peñalosa & Orgiazzi, E., 2011. "GINI DP 12: Factor Components of Inequality. A Cross-Country Study," GINI Discussion Papers 12, AIAS, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies.

    More about this item

    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:uma:periwp:wp54. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 bibliographic 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.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Judy Fogg (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/permaus.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.