Wie ungleich ist die Welt? Eine empirische Analyse

This article aims at quantifying inequality on the global level. Using different data sets we find that the results are quite contradictory. Anyhow, we can identify some common trends. Unweighted international inequality has been unambiguously falling in the last decade. In addition, weighted international inequality dropped quite dramatically in the last 30 years. The BRIC countries, especially China, were a main driver of this development. Yet excluding these countries we still find a decrease of inequality during the last decade. While inequality within countries is falling, inequality within countries seems to be on the rise and therefore will be of greater importance in future research.