What Data-Rich Assessments of Socioeconomic Inequality and Mobility in Rich Countries Overlook in Poor Countries

Advances in the scale and sophistication of individual income data compiled across high-income countries have enabled researchers to measure inequality and intergenerational mobility at a highly granular level and over long periods of time. The edited volume Measuring Distribution and Mobility of Income and Wealth (Chetty et al (2022), comprising 23 empirically rich studies, provides a comprehensive stocktaking of the recent empirical evidence. This paper reviews the volume’s key findings obtained for high-income countries and raises several questions that extend to low-income countries. What stands out is that income and wealth inequality are increasing, while intergenerational mobility is declining, across most high-income countries. This begs the following questions. Is the Kuznets curve due for a revision? How can countries achieve (and maintain) higher levels of socioeconomic mobility as they develop? To what extent do inequality and mobility trajectories unfold in different ways for countries at varying levels of economic development? How and why do certain subgroups within societies consistently remain at the bottom of the income distribution? Finally, what policy measures that redress inequality and enhance mobility are likely to be both more effective and politically supportable?