The New Geography of Global Income Inequality

Preface xi Part I The New Geography Hypothesis 1 Massive Global Income Inequality: When Did It Arise and Why Does It Matter? 3(12) The Growing World Income Pie 3(2) Other Welfare Changes 5(1) The Rise in Income Disparities over the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries 6(4) Why Nations? 10(2) Why Not Focus on Poverty Rather than on Inequality? 12(3) 2 The Reversal of Historical Inequality Trends 15(18) Myths of the Trade Protest Model 16(6) Causes of the Reversal: An Overview 22(1) The Inequality Transition 23(10) Part II Measurement 3 How Is National Income Measured, and Can We Trust the Data? 33(37) How Is National Income Measured? 34(5) Are Income Estimates Plausible? 39(10) Are the Historical Income Data Reliable Enough? 49(3) Are the Contemporary Income Data Reliable Enough? 52(5) Measuring Income over Time 57(6) Appendix A3: Adjusting for Household Economies in Poor Nations 63(7) 4 Inequality: What It Is and How It Is Measured 70(17) Defining Inequality 71(2) Income Ratios and Income Inequality 73(6) Criteria for Inequality Indexes 79(1) Summary of Inequality Measurement 80(1) Appendix A4: Five Inequality Indexes 81(6) Part III Evidence 5 What We Already Know 87(12) Most of the World's Total Income Inequality Is between Nations 88(4) A Note on the Traditional Literature on Income Inequality 92(7) 6 Income Inequality across Nations in the Late Twentieth Century 99(24) The Trend in Between-Nation Income Inequality since 1960 101(2) Is the Decline Real? 103(5) Interval Estimates 108(10) Other Between-Nation Inequalities 118(2) Persistence of the Myth of Growing Inequality: Where Analyses Go Wrong 120(3) 7 Weighted versus Unweighted Inequality: Key to the Divergence Debate 123(18) Trends with and without Adjustment for Purchasing Power Parity 124(1) Trends in Weighted versus Unweighted Income Inequality 125(1) To Weight or Not to Weight? 126(3) Why the Weighted and Unweighted Trends Differ 129(4) Trends Based on Fixed Population Shares 133(3) Trends Based on Overweighting of Poor Nations 136(2) Summary: What Affects Findings 138(3) 8 Continental Divides: Asia, Africa, and the Reversal of the Trend 141(11) Regional Growth Rates during Western Industrialization 142(4) Regional Growth Rates since 1960 146(3) Asian Turnaround and the Reversal of the Trend 149(2) Summary: The Trend in Between-Nation Income Inequality 151(1) 9 Change in Income Inequality within Nations 152 Historical Trends in Income Inequality Revisited 153(2) Data and Methods 155(4) Change in Within-Nation Income Inequality by Region 159(3) Change in Within-Nation Income Inequality for the Entire World 162(7) Part IV Explanations and Predictions 10 Causes of the Inequality Transition 169(35) Theories of World Stratification 169(16) Causes of the Inequality Transition: Overview 185(2) First Cause of the Inequality Transition: Spreading Industrialization 187(5) Second Cause of the Inequality Transition: Rise of the Service Sector 192(1) Third Cause of the Inequality Transition: Convergence of National Institutions 193(3) Fourth Cause of the Inequality Transition: Technology That Reduces the Effect of Labor Immobility 196(5) Appendix A10: World System/Dependency Theory 201(3) 11 The Future of Global Income Inequality 204(15) Nations as Economies 204(3) The Demographic Windfall Hypothesis 207(5) Has Global Income Inequality Peaked? 212(7) Epilogue: Does Rising Income Bring Greater Happiness? 219(8) Are Richer People Happier? 219(2) Are People Happier Now? 221(6) Notes 227(10) References 237(14) Index 251