Examining interrelation between global and national income inequalities

Abstract

The last decade brought increasing attention to income and wealth inequalities in advanced economies because of their increase in several countries and negative social and political implications. However, this debate is often limited to the single-country perspective, disregarding decreasing global income inequalities, i.e. inequalities between individuals in the entire world. This paper focuses mainly on the global dimension of the inequality trends but also tries to update statistics on national inequality trends which, contrary to the dominant narrative, seem to go in various directions depending on a concrete country. Finally, an attempt is made to analyze the potential interrelation and trade-off between decreasing global inequalities and increasing national inequalities and the role of globalization, in its various forms, in such a trade-off.