Abstract

LAKNER, Christoph  and  MILANOVIC, Branko. Global Income Distribution from the Fall of the Berlin Wall to the Great Recession. Rev.econ.inst. [online]. 2015, vol.17, n.32, pp.71-128. ISSN 0124-5996.  https://doi.org/10.18601/01245996.v17n32.03.

The paper presents a newly compiled and improved database of national household surveys between 1988 and 2008. In 2008, the global Gini index is at 70.5 percent having declined by approximately 2 Gini points over this twenty year period. When it is adjusted for the likely under-reporting of higher? incomes in surveys by using the gap between national accounts consumption and survey means in combination with a Pareto-type imputation of the upper tail, the estimate is a much higher global Gini of almost 76 percent. With such an adjustment the downward trend in the Gini almost disappears. Tracking the evolution of individual country- deciles shows the underlying elements that drive the changes in the global distribution: China left the bottom ranks, modifying the overall shape of the global income distribution in the process and creating an important global "median" class that transformed a twin-peaked 1988 global distribution into a single-peaked one. The "winners" were country-deciles which in 1988 stood at the median of the global income distribution, 90 percent of which are from Asia in terms of population. The "losers" were the country-deciles in 1988 were around the 85th percentile of the global income distribution, almost 90 percent of which are from mature economies in terms of population.

Keywords : Income distribution; globalization; higher incomes.

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