Global earnings inequality: Evidence from a new database

an article by Olle Hammar and Daniel Waldenström published in VOX EU: CEPR’s Policy Portal
with grateful thanks to ResearchBuzz: Firehose

Abstract

Recent studies have analysed trends in global income inequality, but for most people in the world, labour earnings represent the vast majority of their income. This column uses a new global database on occupational earnings since 1970 to examine trends in earnings inequality between countries’ high- and low- earners, between countries, and between occupational groups. Global earnings inequality has fallen over the past half-century, and so has inequality within occupations, with main equalisation in the late 1990s and 2000s.

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