Coefficients and inequalities
The distribution of income reveals marked differences, but, as shown by Michael Roberts, it is wealth that
is the real give-away
I have written before about the fact that, both in advanced and so-called ‘emerging economies’, wealth is significantly more unequally distributed than income.
1 Moreover, the pro-capitalist World Economic Forum (WEF) reported in 2018: “This problem has improved little in recent years, with wealth inequality rising in 49 economies.”
The usual index used for measuring inequality in an economy is the Gini index - named after the Italian sociologist, Corrado Gini. A Gini coefficient of zero expresses perfect equality, where all values are the same (for example, where everyone has the same income). A Gini coefficient of one (or 100%) expresses maximal inequality among values (eg, for a large number of people where only one person has all the income or consumption and all others have none, the Gini coefficient will be