Global Income Distribution : From the Fall of the Berlin Wall to the Great Recession

Lakner, Christoph ; Milanovic, Branko

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: AVERAGE ANNUAL;    AVERAGE GROWTH;    AVERAGE GROWTH RATE;    AVERAGE INCOME;    AVERAGE INCOMES;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-6719
RP-ID  :  WPS6719

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

The paper presents a newly compiled andimproved database of national household surveys between 1988and 2008. In 2008, the global Gini index is around 70.5percent having declined by approximately 2 Gini points overthis twenty year period. When it is adjusted for the likelyunder-reporting of top incomes in surveys by using the gapbetween national accounts consumption and survey means incombination with a Pareto-type imputation of the upper tail,the estimate is a much higher global Gini of almost 76percent. With such an adjustment the downward trend in theGini almost disappears. Tracking the evolution of individualcountry-deciles shows the underlying elements that drive thechanges in the global distribution: China has graduated fromthe bottom ranks, modifying the overall shape of the globalincome distribution in the process and creating an importantglobal "median" class that has transformed atwin-peaked 1988 global distribution into an almostsingle-peaked one now. The "winners" werecountry-deciles that in 1988 were around the median of theglobal income distribution, 90 percent of whom in terms ofpopulation are from Asia. The "losers" were thecountry-deciles that in 1988 were around the 85th percentileof the global income distribution, almost 90 percent of whomin terms of population are from mature economies.