In 2023, according to the Gini coefficient, household income distribution in the United States was 0.47. This figure was at 0.43 in 1990, which indicates an increase in income inequality in the U.S. over the past 30 years. What is the Gini coefficient? The Gini coefficient, or Gini index, is a statistical measure of economic inequality and wealth distribution among a population. A value of zero represents perfect economic equality, and a value of one represents perfect economic inequality. The Gini coefficient helps to visualize income inequality in a more digestible way. For example, according to the Gini coefficient, the District of Columbia and the state of New York have the greatest amount of income inequality in the U.S. with a score of 0.51, and Utah has the greatest income equality with a score of 0.43. The Gini coefficient around the world The Gini coefficient is also an effective measure to help picture income inequality around the world. For example, in 2018 income inequality was highest in South Africa, while income inequality was lowest in Slovenia.

New York was the state with the greatest gap between rich and poor, with a Gini coefficient score of 0.52 in 2023. Although not a state, District of Columbia was among the highest Gini coefficients in the United States that year.

This table contains data on income inequality. The primary measure is the Gini index – a measure of the extent to which the distribution of income among families/households within a community deviates from a perfectly equal distribution. The index ranges from 0.0, when all families (households) have equal shares of income (implies perfect equality), to 1.0 when one family (household) has all the income and the rest have none (implies perfect inequality). Index data is provided for California and its counties, regions, and large cities/towns. The data is from the U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey. The table is part of a series of indicators in the Healthy Communities Data and Indicators Project of the Office of Health Equity. Income is linked to acquiring resources for healthy living. Both household income and the distribution of income across a society independently contribute to the overall health status of a community. On average Western industrialized nations with large disparities in income distribution tend to have poorer health status than similarly advanced nations with a more equitable distribution of income. Approximately 119,200 (5%) of the 2.4 million U.S. deaths in 2000 are attributable to income inequality. The pathways by which income inequality act to increase adverse health outcomes are not known with certainty, but policies that provide for a strong safety net of health and social services have been identified as potential buffers. More information about the data table and a data dictionary can be found in the About/Attachments section.

Income InequalityThe level of income inequality among households in a county can be measured using the Gini index. A Gini index varies between zero and one. A value of one indicates perfect inequality, where only one household in the county has any income. A value of zero indicates perfect equality, where all households in the county have equal income.The United States, as a country, has a Gini Index of 0.47 for this time period. For comparision in this map, the purple counties have greater income inequality, while orange counties have less inequality of incomes. For reference, Brazil has an index of 0.58 (relatively high inequality) and Denmark has an index of 0.24 (relatively low inequality).The 5-year Gini index for the U.S. was 0.4695 in 2007-2011 and 0.467 in 2006-2010. Appalachian Regional Commission, September 2013Data source: U.S. Census Bureau, 5-Year American Community Survey, 2006-2010 & 2007-2011

Graph and download economic data for Income Inequality in New York County, NY (2020RATIO036061) from 2010 to 2023 about New York County, NY; inequality; New York; NY; income; and USA.

The Gini index measures economic inequality in a country. Specifically, it is the extent to which the distribution of income (or, in some cases, consumption expenditure) deviates from a perfectly equal distribution among individuals or households within an economy.

This statistic shows the inequality of income distribution in China from 2005 to 2023 based on the Gini Index. In 2023, China reached a score of ************ points. The Gini Index is a statistical measure that is used to represent unequal distributions, e.g. income distribution. It can take any value between 1 and 100 points (or 0 and 1). The closer the value is to 100 the greater is the inequality. 40 or 0.4 is the warning level set by the United Nations. The Gini Index for South Korea had ranged at about **** in 2022. Income distribution in China The Gini coefficient is used to measure the income inequality of a country. The United States, the World Bank, the US Central Intelligence Agency, and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development all provide their own measurement of the Gini coefficient, varying in data collection and survey methods. According to the United Nations Development Programme, countries with the largest income inequality based on the Gini index are mainly located in Africa and Latin America, with South Africa displaying the world's highest value in 2022. The world's most equal countries, on the contrary, are situated mostly in Europe. The United States' Gini for household income has increased by around ten percent since 1990, to **** in 2023. Development of inequality in China Growing inequality counts as one of the biggest social, economic, and political challenges to many countries, especially emerging markets. Over the last 20 years, China has become one of the world's largest economies. As parts of the society have become more and more affluent, the country's Gini coefficient has also grown sharply over the last decades. As shown by the graph at hand, China's Gini coefficient ranged at a level higher than the warning line for increasing risk of social unrest over the last decade. However, the situation has slightly improved since 2008, when the Gini coefficient had reached the highest value of recent times.

Abstract

This file contains data on Gini coefficients, cumulative quintile shares, explanations regarding the basis on which the Gini coefficient was computed, and the source of the information. There are two data-sets, one containing the "high quality" sample and the other one including all the information (of lower quality) that had been collected.

The database was constructed for the production of the following paper:

Deininger, Klaus and Lyn Squire, "A New Data Set Measuring Income Inequality", The World Bank Economic Review, 10(3): 565-91, 1996.

This article presents a new data set on inequality in the distribution of income. The authors explain the criteria they applied in selecting data on Gini coefficients and on individual quintile groups’ income shares. Comparison of the new data set with existing compilations reveals that the data assembled here represent an improvement in quality and a significant expansion in coverage, although differences in the definition of the underlying data might still affect intertemporal and international comparability. Based on this new data set, the authors do not find a systematic link between growth and changes in aggregate inequality. They do find a strong positive relationship between growth and reduction of poverty.

Geographic coverage

In what follows, we provide brief descriptions of main features for individual countries that are included in the data-base. Without being comprehensive, these notes are intended to indicate some of the considerations underlying our decision to include or exclude certain observations.

Argentina Various permanent household surveys, all covering urban centers only, have been regularly conducted since 1972 and are quoted in a wide variety of sources and years, e.g., for 1980 (World Bank 1992), 1985 (Altimir 1994), and 1989 (World Bank 1992). Estimates for 1963, 1965, 1969/70, 1970/71, 1974, 1975, 1980, and 1981 (Altimir 1987) are based only on Greater Buenos Aires. Estimates for 1961, 1963, 1970 (Jain 1975) and for 1970 (van Ginneken 1984) have only limited geographic coverage and do not satisfy our minimum criteria.

Despite the many urban surveys, there are no income distribution data that are representative of the population as a whole. References to national income distribution for the years 1953, 1959, and 1961(CEPAL 1968 in Altimir 1986 ) are based on extrapolation from national accounts and have therefore not been included. Data for 1953 and 1961 from Weisskoff (1970) , from Lecaillon (1984) , and from Cromwell (1977) are also excluded.

Australia Household surveys, the result of which is reported in the statistical yearbook, have been conducted in 1968/9, 1975/6, 1978/9, 1981, 1985, 1986, 1989, and 1990.

Data for 1962 (Cromwell, 1977) and 1966/67 (Sawyer 1976) were excluded as they covered only tax payers. Jain's data for 1970 was excluded because it covered income recipients only. Data from Podder (1972) for 1967/68, from Jain (1975) for the same year, from UN (1985) for 78/79, from Sunders and Hobbes (1993) for 1986 and for 1989 were excluded given the availability of the primary sources. Data from Bishop (1991) for 1981/82, from Buhman (1988) for 1981/82, from Kakwani (1986) for 1975/76, and from Sunders and Hobbes (1993) for 1986 were utilized to test for the effect of different definitions. The values for 1967 used by Persson and Tabellini and Alesina and Rodrik (based on Paukert and Jain) are close to the ones reported in the Statistical Yearbook for 1969.

Austria: In addition to data referring to the employed population (Guger 1989), national household surveys for 1987 and 1991 are included in the LIS data base. As these data do not include income from self-employment, we do not report them in our high quality data-set.

Bahamas Data for Ginis and shares are available for 1973, 1977, 1979, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, and 1993 in government reports on population censuses and household budget surveys, and for 1973 and 1975 from UN (1981). Estimates for 1970 (Jain 1975), 1973, 1975, 1977, and 1979 (Fields 1989) have been excluded given the availability of primary sources.

Bangladesh Data from household surveys for 1973/74, 1976/77, 1977/78, 1981/82, and 1985/86 are available from the Statistical Yearbook, complemented by household-survey based information from Chen (1995) and the World Development Report. Household surveys with rural coverage for 1959, 1960, 1963/64, 1965, 1966/67 and 1968/69, and with urban coverage for 1963/64, 1965, 1966/67, and 1968/69 are also available from the Statistical yearbook. Data for 1963/64 ,1964 and 1966/67, (Jain 1975) are not included due to limited geographic coverage, We also excluded secondary sources for 1973/74, 1976/77, 1981/82 (Fields 1989), 1977 (UN 1981), 1983 (Milanovic 1994), and 1985/86 due to availability of the primary source.

Barbados National household surveys have been conducted in 1951/52 and 1978/79 (Downs, 1988). Estimates based on personal tax returns, reported consistently for 1951-1981 (Holder and Prescott, 1989), had to be excluded as they exclude the non-wage earning population. Jain's figure (used by Alesina and Rodrik) is based on the same source.

Belgium Household surveys with national coverage are available for 1978/79 (UN 1985), and for 1985, 1988, and 1992 (LIS 1995). Earlier data for 1969, 1973, 1975, 1976 and 1977 (UN 1981) refer to taxable households only and are not included.

Bolivia The only survey with national coverage is the 1990 LSMS (World Development Report). Surveys for 1986 and 1989 cover the main cities only (Psacharopoulos et al. 1992) and are therefore not included. Data for 1968 (Cromwell 1977) do not refer to a clear definition and is therefore excluded.

Botswana The only survey with national coverage was conducted in 1985-1986 (Chen et al 1993); surveys in 74/75 and 85/86 included rural areas only (UN 1981). We excluded Gini estimates for 1971/72 that refer to the economically active population only (Jain 1975), as well as 1974/75 and 1985/86 (Valentine 1993) due to lack of national coverage or consistency in definition.

Brazil Data from 1960, 1970, 1974/75, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1982, 1983, 1985, 1987 and 1989 are available from the statistical yearbook, in addition to data for 1978 (Fields 1987) and for 1979 (Psacharopoulos et al. 1992). Other sources have been excluded as they were either not of national coverage, based on wage earners only, or because a more consistent source was available.

Bulgaria: Data from household surveys are available for 1963-69 (in two year intervals), for 1970-90 (on an annual basis) from the Statistical yearbook and for 1991 - 93 from household surveys by the World Bank (Milanovic and Ying).

Burkina Faso A priority survey has been undertaken in 1995.

Central African Republic: Except for a household survey conducted in 1992, no information was available.

Cameroon The only data are from a 1983/4 household budget survey (World Bank Poverty Assessment).

Canada Gini- and share data for the 1950-61 (in irregular intervals), 1961-81 (biennially), and 1981-91 (annually) are available from official sources (Statistical Yearbook for years before 1971 and Income Distributions by Size in Canada for years since 1973, various issues). All other references seem to be based on these primary sources.

Chad: An estimate for 1958 is available in the literature, and used by Alesina and Rodrik and Persson and Tabellini but was not included due to lack of primary sources.

Chile The first nation-wide survey that included not only employment income was carried out in 1968 (UN 1981). This is complemented by household survey-based data for 1971 (Fields 1989), 1989, and 1994. Other data that refer either only to part of the population or -as in the case of a long series available from World Bank country operations- are not clearly based on primary sources, are excluded.

China Annual household surveys from 1980 to 1992, conducted separately in rural and urban areas, were consolidated by Ying (1995), based on the statistical yearbook. Data from other secondary sources are excluded due to limited geographic and population coverage and data from Chen et al (1993) for 1985 and 1990 have not been included, to maintain consistency of sources..

Colombia The first household survey with national coverage was conducted in 1970 (DANE 1970). In addition, there are data for 1971, 1972, 1974 CEPAL (1986), and for 1978, 1988/89, and 1991 (World Bank Poverty Assessment 1992 and Chen et al. 1995). Data referring to years before 1970 -including the 1964 estimate used in Persson and Tabellini were excluded, as were estimates for the wage earning population only.

Costa Rica Data on Gini coefficients and quintile shares are available for 1961, 1971 (Cespedes 1973),1977 (OPNPE 1982), 1979 (Fields 1989), 1981 (Chen et al 1993), 1983 (Bourguignon and Morrison 1989), 1986 (Sauma-Fiatt 1990), and 1989 (Chen et al 1993). Gini coefficients for 1971 (Gonzalez-Vega and Cespedes in Rottenberg 1993), 1973 and 1985 (Bourguignon and Morrison 1989) cover urban areas only and were excluded.

Cote d'Ivoire: Data based on national-level household surveys (LSMS) are available for 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, and 1995. Information for the 1970s (Schneider 1991) is based on national accounting information and therefore excluded

Cuba Official information on income distribution is limited. Data from secondary sources are available for 1953, 1962, 1973, and 1978, relying on personal wage income, i.e. excluding the population that is not economically active (Brundenius 1984).

Czech Republic Household surveys for 1993 and 1994 were obtained from Milanovic and Ying. While it is in principle possible to go back further, splitting national level surveys for the former Czechoslovakia into their independent parts, we decided not to do so as the same argument could be used to

Abstract

Is global inequality (inequality among world citizens) stable, decreasing or increasing? How high it is? Is it mostly due to inequalities within nations or between nations? Is there a global middle class? See the working papers above: "True world income distribution 1988 and 1993: first calculations based on household surveys alone" no. 2244, and "Decomposing global income distribution: Does the world have a middle class?" no. 2562

Household survey data (1988-2002) used in these papers, and subsequent book "Worlds Apart: Measuring International and Global Inequality", Princeton University Press, 2005. The data are for three benchmark years: 1988, 1993 and 1998

Kind of data

Aggregate data [agg]

Mode of data collection

Other [oth]

Graph and download economic data for GINI Index for the United States (SIPOVGINIUSA) from 1963 to 2023 about gini, indexes, and USA.

This article provides an overview of wealth inequality in Germany during 1300-1850, introducing a novel database. We document four alternating phases of inequality decline and growth. The Black Death (1347-1352) led to inequality decline, until about 1450. Thereafter, inequality rose steadily. The Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) and the 1627-1629 plague triggered a second phase of inequality reduction. This distinguishes Germany from other European areas where inequality grew monotonically. Inequality growth resumed from about 1700, well before the Industrial Revolution. Our findings offer new material to current debates on the determinants of inequality change in western societies, past and present

While most Americans appear to acknowledge the large gap between the rich and the poor in the U.S., it is not clear if the public is aware of recent changes in income inequality. Even though economic inequality has grown substantially in recent decades, studies have shown that the public's perception of growing income disparities has remained mostly unchanged since the 1980s. This research offers an alternative approach to evaluating how public perceptions of inequality are developed. Centrally, it conceptualizes the public's response to growing economic disparities by applying theories of macro-political behavior and place-based contextual effects to the formation of aggregate perceptions about income inequality. It is argued that most of the public relies on basic information about the economy to form attitudes about inequality and that geographic context---in this case, the American states---plays a role in how views of income disparities are produced. A new measure of state perceptions of growing economic inequality over a 25-year period is used to examine whether the public is responsive to objective changes in economic inequality. Time-series cross-sectional analyses suggest that the public's perceptions of growing inequality are largely influenced by objective state economic indicators and state political ideology. This research has implications for how knowledgeable the public is of disparities between the rich and the poor, whether state context influences attitudes about inequality, and what role the public will have in determining how expanding income differences are addressed through government policy.

Cross-national research on the causes and consequences of income inequality has been hindered by the limitations of the existing inequality datasets: greater coverage across countries and over time has been available from these sources only at the cost of significantly reduced comparability across observations. The goal of the Standardized World Income Inequality Database (SWIID) is to meet the needs of those engaged in broadly cross-national research by maximizing the comparability of income inequality data while maintaining the widest possible coverage across countries and over time. The SWIID’s income inequality estimates are based on thousands of reported Gini indices from hundreds of published sources, including the OECD Income Distribution Database, the Socio-Economic Database for Latin America and the Caribbean generated by CEDLAS and the World Bank, Eurostat, the World Bank’s PovcalNet, the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, national statistical offices around the world, and academic studies while minimizing reliance on problematic assumptions by using as much information as possible from proximate years within the same country. The data collected and harmonized by the Luxembourg Income Study is employed as the standard. The SWIID currently incorporates comparable Gini indices of disposable and market income inequality for 199 countries for as many years as possible from 1960 to the present; it also includes information on absolute and relative redistribution.

In the first quarter of 2024, almost two-thirds percent of the total wealth in the United States was owned by the top 10 percent of earners. In comparison, the lowest 50 percent of earners only owned 2.5 percent of the total wealth. Income inequality in the U.S. Despite the idea that the United States is a country where hard work and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps will inevitably lead to success, this is often not the case. In 2023, 7.4 percent of U.S. households had an annual income under 15,000 U.S. dollars. With such a small percentage of people in the United States owning such a vast majority of the country’s wealth, the gap between the rich and poor in America remains stark. The top one percent The United States follows closely behind China as the country with the most billionaires in the world. Elon Musk alone held around 219 billion U.S. dollars in 2022. Over the past 50 years, the CEO-to-worker compensation ratio has exploded, causing the gap between rich and poor to grow, with some economists theorizing that this gap is the largest it has been since right before the Great Depression.

In the 2022/23 financial year, various measures of inequality in the United Kingdom decreased when compared with 2021/22. The S80/20 ratio fell from *** to ***, the P90/10 ratio from *** to ***, and the Palma ratio between *** and ***.

5 year GINI economic inequality index for tracts in Hamilton County

The World Income Inequality Database (WIID) contains information on income inequality in various countries, and is maintained by the United Nations University-World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER). The database was originally compiled during 1997-99 for the research project Rising Income Inequality and Poverty Reduction, directed by Giovanni Andrea Corina. A revised and updated version of the database was published in June 2005 as part of the project Global Trends in Inequality and Poverty, directed by Tony Shorrocks and Guang Hua Wan. The database was revised in 2007 and a new version was launched in May 2008.

The database contains data on inequality in the distribution of income in various countries. The central variable in the dataset is the Gini index, a measure of income distribution in a society. In addition, the dataset contains information on income shares by quintile or decile. The database contains data for 159 countries, including some historical entities. The temporal coverage varies substantially across countries. For some countries there is only one data entry; in other cases there are over 100 data points. The earliest entry is from 1867 (United Kingdom), the latest from 2003. The majority of the data (65%) cover the years from 1980 onwards. The 2008 update (version WIID2c) includes some major updates and quality improvements, in fact leading to a reduced number of variables in the new version. The new version has 334 new observations and several revisions/ corrections made in 2007 and 2008.

The deposited data allows replication of the statistical analysis and figures in "Warfare and Economic Inequality: Evidence from Preindustrial Germany (c. 1400-1800)". The question the project adresses is simple: What was the impact of military conflict on economic inequality? I argue that ordinary military conflicts increased local economic inequality. Warfare raised the financial needs of towns in preindustrial times, leading to more resource extraction from the population. This resource extraction happened via inequality-promoting channels, such as regressive taxation. Only in truly major wars might inequality-reducing destruction outweigh inequality-promoting extraction and reduce inequality. To test this argument I construct a novel panel dataset combining information about economic inequality in 75 localities, and more than 700 conflicts over four centuries. I find that the many ordinary conflicts — paradigmatic of life in the preindustrial world — were continuous reinforcers of economic inequality. I confirm that the Thirty Years’ War was indeed a great equaliser, but this was an exception and not the rule. Rising inequality is an underappreciated negative externality in times of conflict.

Statistics on income inequality based on the Gini index and the p90/p10 ratio on various household income concepts (market income, total income, after-tax income) for Canada, provinces and territories, census divisions and census subdivisions.

Replication Data for: "Income inequality and the erosion of democracy in the twenty-first century," published in PNAS.