Being poor in a rich country
October 26, 2013 4 Comments
The FT has an article today with ‘the one chart that explains the world’.
The vertical axis refers to the distribution of global incomes. The horizontal axis segments citizens of different countries by 20 income groups. As you can see, even the poorest people in Germany are very much richer than those in the Ivory Coast, for example. The person compiling the data, Prof Milanovic, finds that about half of one’s income depends on the average income of the country in which that person was born.
It reminds me of a post on global income distribution I made previously, basically that the poorest 5% of Americans earn more than the richest 5% of Indians. Source .
India led the world in GDP before the industrial revolution, when population meant productivity, and India had the largest population. Following the industrial revolution, India entered a long period of economic stagnation. India used to account for 33% of the world’s GDP, then fell to 3%. Source.
Marc Gawley 