[ITEMS.AND.ISSUES]
The divergence in per capita incomes has been accompanied by a fairly broad trend towards increasing inequality within countries. According to Cornia (2004, Part I), 48 out of 73 countries for which information is available experienced a deterioration of income distribution during the last decades of the XX century; these 48 countries contain 87.5% of the population of the sample of 73 countries (Table 1).2 Furthermore, in four out of five countries that experienced a deterioration of income distribution, the worsening of the Gini coefficient was at least equivalent to three percentage points, a relatively large change. On the contrary, only nine countries, with 2.7% of the population, experienced a clear improvement in income distribution and in the rest income distribution remained essentially stable. According to this study, inequality tended to increase, sometimes markedly, in a large group of industrial countries,3 in Central and Eastern Europe, and in Latin America. Asian countries, amongst which China stands out, have increasingly shared in this trend. Africa is the only continent without a clear tendency of this sort, as a result of opposite patterns experienced by different countries in the continent. PG [ 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 ]
http://publications.ssrc.org/items/v5n3/globalization1.html (4 of 4) [6/23/09 11:49:41 AM]