World Inequality Report

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The World Inequality Report , dt. Report on global inequality is a report by the World Inequality Lab of the Ecole d'Economie de Paris , the basis of the data of the World Wealth and Income Database global (WID) income and wealth inequality estimates. The presentation of the extent and development of economic inequality is the basis of the public discussion of the topic and possible political measures to combat economic inequality.

The first report was published under the title World Inequality Report 2018 on December 14, 2017 during the first WID.world Conference at the École d'Économie de Paris. It was edited by Facundo Alvaredo, Lucas Chanel, Thomas Piketty , Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman . The report describes that the gap between rich and poor has widened around the globe since 1980. In Europe, inequality rose less rapidly, while in North America and Asia it rose rapidly. In the Middle East, Africa and Brazil, income inequality persisted at very high levels. It is greatest in the Middle East, where the top 10% of the population receive 60% of the national income.

World Inequality Lab

At the World Inequality Lab - located at the École d'Économie de Paris - more than 100 researchers from more than 70 countries work together to update and expand the World Wealth and Income Database (WID). Using the WID data, reports on inequality and working papers on content-related and methodological issues are created. The WID aims to be an information center for academic research and the general public. The WID is an open source database.

The starting point was the World Top Incomes Database (WTID). This focused on concentrating the wealth of the top ten percent in a given population. The first 2013 WID, which was put in an open source repository in September 2013, was compiled by Facundo Alvaredo, Anthony B. Atkinson , Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman. By 2015, the WID provided data series on the distribution of income and wealth in thirty-three countries, mainly from America and Europe. At that time the intention was already to include data series for another forty countries.

From 2016 to 2017, Piketty, Saez, and Zucman studied distribution statistics of the United States' national accounts as part of the Centers for Equitable Growth (CEG) in 2015. The pre-tax and after-tax distributions of income and wealth are examined using the United States' national income and product accounts and cash flow.

Global Inequality Report 2018

The aim of the report is to provide stakeholders with the facts for an informed public debate on inequality. The aim is not to create a social consensus on the issue of inequality. This will never happen simply because the ideal level of inequality cannot be scientifically determined. Such decisions would have to be negotiated democratically. To do this, however, you need the thorough and transparent information on income and assets presented. The 300-page report consists of five parts. Part I describes goals and methods for measuring economic inequality; Part II describes the developments in income inequality, first at the global level, then at the country level for the USA, France, Germany, China, Russia, India, the Middle East, Brazil and South Africa; Part III presents the dynamics of the development of public and private wealth; Part IV describes the development of global wealth inequality; Part V describes scenarios of possible future developments and discusses instruments for combating inequality.

First WID.world conference

The conference took place in Paris on December 14th and 15th. It was supported by the École d'Économie de Paris, the Institute for New Economic Thinking New York, the Washington Center for Equitable Growth (CEG), the Ford Foundation and the European Research Council . In addition to the publication of the report, a number of research papers on income and wealth inequality were presented.

Media coverage

Within days of publication, the report was featured in various articles in the New York Times , Guardian , Financial Times, and other media outlets.

According to the New York Times, political programs play a big role. A more aggressive redistribution through taxes and transfers has saved Europe from the acute disparities to which the Americans have become accustomed. Unequal access to education helps to reproduce inequality in the United States across generations. The New York Times article also notes that China's strategy - based on low-skilled manufactures for export and aggressive investment in infrastructure - has proven more effective in raising the standard of living for the lower half of the population than it is after India’s domestic strategy that has limited the benefits of globalization to the well-educated elite.

Tetlow of the Financial Times describes inequality as the defining characteristic of our time, when the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The India Times article draws attention to the way reforms have been carried out in India since the 1980s; this has led to a significant increase in inequality so that the top earners of 0.1% continue to grow more than all of the bottom 50% combined. According to the Word Inequality Report, income inequality in India is now reaching historic highs. In 2014, the share of national income of India's top 1% earners was 22%, while the share of the top 10% was around 56%.

Daniel Binswanger said in the republic of January 20, 2018 that the WID has presented the most reliable and comprehensive data on global inequality to date. The report also covers regions, for example the Middle East, from which very little data has been available so far. Not only the top, but also the middle and lower income and wealth categories are recorded, so that a comprehensive basis for discussion is now available.

Individual evidence

  1. Short version in German
  2. ^ Homepage of the WID
  3. Anthony B. Atkinson, Thomas Piketty, and Emmanuel Saez, "Top Incomes in the Long Run of History," Journal of Economic Literature 49, no. 1 (2011): 3-71,
  4. ^ Facundo Alvaredo, Anthony B Atkinson, Thomas Piketty, and Emmanuel Saez, "The Top 1 Percent in International and Historical Perspective,". Journal of Economic Perspectives 27, no.3 (2013): 3-20.
  5. ^ Neil Irwin: Thomas Piketty Responds to Criticism of His Data . In: New York Times , May 29, 2014. 
  6. a b The World Wealth and Income Database (WID) . In: Journal of World-Historical Information (JWHI) . 2-3 (2). doi : 10.5195 / jwhi.2015.33 .
  7. ^ The World Wealth and Income Database (WID) . September 1st 2013. 
  8. Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, Gabriel Zucman: Summary: CEG Grant: US Distributional Accounts (PDF) June 2015.
  9. ^ Piketty, Thomas. 2014. Capital in the 21st Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
  10. ^ Piketty, Thomas, and Emmanuel Saez. 2003. “Income Inequality in the United States, 1913-1998,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 118 (1), 1-39.
  11. Saez, Emmanuel and Gabriel Zucman. 2014. “Wealth Inequality in the United States since 1913: Evidence from Capitalized Income Tax Data,” NBER working paper 20625.
  12. World Inequality Report (2018) (PDF) p. 300. December 14, 2017. "This report emphasizes recent research articles written by: Facundo Alvaredo Lydia Assouad Anthony B. Atkinson Charlotte Bartels Thomas Blanchet Lucas Chancel Luis Estévez-Bauluz Juliette Fournier Bertrand Garbinti Jonathan Goupille-Lebret Clara Martinez-Toledano Salvatore Morelli Marc Morgan Delphine Nougayrède Filip Novokmet Thomas Piketty Emmanuel Saez Li Yang Gabriel Zucman "
  13. Methodology The methods used to make the estimates are available on the report's website.
  14. (save the date) Release of the World Inequality Report 2018 - 14 December 2017 . In: WID . December 2017.
  15. Program and contributions of WID.world Conference 2017
  16. It's an Unequal World. It doesn't have to be . In: New York Times , December 14, 2017. "" Examining the "World Inequality Report" - published Thursday by the creators of the World Wealth and Income Database, who include the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez - it is tempting to see the rising concentration of incomes as some sort of unstoppable force of nature, an economic inevitability driven by globalization and technology. The report finds that the richest 1 percent of humanity reaped 27 percent of the world's income between 1980 and 2016. The bottom 50 percent, by contrast, got only 12 percent. "" 
  17. ^ Rupert Neate: World's richest 0.1% have boosted their wealth by as much as poorest half . December 14, 2017. "Inequality report also shows UK's 50,000 richest people have seen their share of the country's wealth double since 1984" 
  18. Gemma Tetlow: Is the world becoming more unequal? . In: Financial Times , December 13, 2017. 
  19. ^ ET Bureau: Indian economic inequality widened since 1980: Report . In: India Times , December 14, 2017. 
  20. Daniel Binswanger. The inequality we want

Web links

See also