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Thursday, January 27, 2005


World income inequality decreasing
That's the good news from James Joyner, citing research by Penn States's Population Research Institute:

Global income inequality is on the decline, contrary to popularly accepted beliefs that the income gulf between nations is growing, says a researcher at Penn State.

"The main thing that is driving this is rapid income growth in China and southern Asia," says Dr. Glenn Firebaugh, professor of sociology and demography, and author of the book, "The New Geography of Global Income Inequality, " published recently by Harvard University Press.

"On average, incomes world wide are increasing at a little less than 2 percent a year, but China is increasing at about 6 percent," Firebaugh explains. "About 40 percent of the world's population lives in China or south Asia, and with such a substantial portion of the world's population moving up in income, this has been compressing income inequality worldwide.
James has other data cites as well and some color charts that illustrate the trend.

But these data should not surprise anyone, really, because the world has been getting steadily richer since 1975, according to UC Berkeley (Berkeley, mind you!) Prof. J. Bradford DeLong:
Since 1975 the world has not only become a richer place, but the world's poor have seen their incomes grow faster than the world's rich... .
DeLong says that most of the improvement has taken place among the 2.5 billion people who live in only two countries, India and China (which James's sites support), which have both freed their economies substantially from statist suffocation since 1975. Says DeLong,
Centrally-planned states have managed to invest more and grow faster for short periods only, and at immense and unacceptable human cost.
See also my post on economic iconoclasm, which has much more info along these lines.

by Donald Sensing, 1/27/2005 07:32:24 PM. Permalink |  





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