Regionally disaggregated estimates of global income inequality with evidence on sensitivity to purchasing power parity

The period spanned by the last decade of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century has been characterised by political and economic developments on a scale rarely witnessed before. This study on inequality within and between countries is based on a data set constructed from household unit records in over 80 countries collected from a variety of data sources and covering over 80% of the world’s population. The departures include its regional focus leading to evidence on difference in inequality magnitudes and their movement between continents and countries. Comparison between the inequality magnitudes and trends in three of the largest economies, China, India, and the USA is a feature of this study. A key message is that a ‘global view’ of inequality gives a misleading picture of the reality affecting individual countries located in different continents with sharp differences in their institutional and colonial history.