The New Geography of Global Income Inequality

Glenn Firebaugh

Harvard University Press, 2009 - Business & Economics - 272 pages

The surprising finding of this book is that, contrary to conventional wisdom, global income inequality is decreasing. Critics of globalization and others maintain that the spread of consumer capitalism is dramatically polarizing the worldwide distribution of income. But as the demographer Glenn Firebaugh carefully shows, income inequality for the world peaked in the late twentieth century and is now heading downward because of declining income inequality across nations. Furthermore, as income inequality declines across nations, it is rising within nations (though not as rapidly as it is declining across nations). Firebaugh claims that this historic transition represents a new geography of global income inequality in the twenty-first century. This book documents the new geography, describes its causes, and explains why other analysts have missed one of the defining features of our era--a transition in inequality that is reducing the importance of where a person is born in determining his or her future well-being.

Contents

• Massive Global Income Inequality When Did It Arise and Why Does It Matter?: 3
• Other Welfare Changes: 5
• The Rise in Income Disparities over the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: 6
• Why Nations?: 10
• Why Not Focus on Poverty Rather than on Inequality?: 12
• The Reversal of Historical Inequality Trends: 15
• Myths of the Trade Protest Model: 16
• An Overview: 22
• The Inequality Transition: 23
• Measurement: 31
• How Is National Income Measured and Can We Trust the Data?: 33
• How Is National Income Measured?: 34
• Are Income Estimates Plausible?: 39
• Are the Historical Income Data Reliable Enough?: 49
• Are the Contemporary Income Data Reliable Enough?: 52
• Measuring Income over Time: 57
• Adjusting for Household Economies in Poor Nations: 63
• Inequality What It Is and How It Is Measured: 70
• Defining Inequality: 71
• Income Ratios and Income Inequality: 73
• Criteria for Inequality Indexes: 79
• Summary of Inequality Measurement: 80
• Five Inequality Indexes: 81
• Evidence: 85
• What We Already Know: 87
• Most of the Worlds Total Income Inequality Is between Nations: 88
• A Note on the Traditional Literature on Income Inequality: 92
• Income Inequality across Nations in the Late Twentieth Century: 99
• The Trend in BetweenNation Income Inequality since 1960: 101
• Is the Decline Real?: 103
• Interval Estimates: 108
• Other BetweenNation Inequalities: 118
• Where Analyses Go Wrong: 120
• Weighted versus Unweighted Inequality Key to the Divergence Debate: 123
• Trends with and without Adjustment for Purchasing Power Parity: 124
• Trends in Weighted versus Unweighted Income Inequality: 125
• To Weight or Not to Weight?: 126
• Why the Weighted and Unweighted Trends Differ: 129
• Trends Based on Fixed Population Shares: 133
• Trends Based on Overweighting of Poor Nations: 136
• What Affects Findings: 138
• Continental Divides Asia Africa and the Reversal of the Trend: 141
• Regional Growth Rates during Western Industrialization: 142
• Regional Growth Rates since 1960: 146
• Asian Turnaround and the Reversal of the Trend: 149
• The Trend in BetweenNation Income Inequality: 151
• Change in Income Inequality within Nations: 152
• Historical Trends in Income Inequality Revisited: 153
• Data and Methods: 155
• Change in WithinNation Income Inequality by Region: 159
• Change in WithinNation Income Inequality for the Entire World: 162
• Explanations and Predictions: 167
• Causes of the Inequality Transition: 169
• Overview: 185
• Spreading Industrialization: 187
• Rise of the Service Sector: 192
• Convergence of National Institutions: 193
• Technology That Reduces the Effect of Labor Immobility: 196
• World SystemDependency Theory: 201
• The Future of Global Income Inequality: 204
• The Demographic Windfall Hypothesis: 207
• Has Global Income Inequality Peaked?: 212
• Does Rising Income Bring Greater Happiness?: 219
• Are People Happier Now?: 221
• Notes: 227
• References: 237
• Index: 251

About the author

Glenn Firebaugh is Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology, Pennsylvania State University.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The New Geography of Global Income Inequality
• Author: Glenn Firebaugh
• Edition: revised
• Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2009
• ISBN: 0674036891, 9780674036895
• Length: 272 pages
• Subjects: Business & Economics / Economic Conditions; Business & Economics / Economics / General; Political Science / Political Economy; Social Science / Demography; Social Science / Sociology / General