Abstract

The wealth Gini index value varies between 0 (perfect equality, i.e. all households or individuals have the same wealth) and 1 (perfect inequality, i.e. one household or individual owns all the wealth, the others have none). The wealth share of the top 10% is the share of wealth owned by the richest 10% of the wealth distribution

Author(s)

Guido Alfani and Sonia Schifano

Production date

10 March 2020

Variable(s)

Wealth Gini and the share of the top 10%

Keywords

Global wealth, inequality, gini, wealth share

Time period

1820-2010

Geographical coverage

39 Countries

Methodologies used for data collection and processing

Annual estimates. See the dataset and the paper for details at https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/3d96efc5-en/1/3/5/index.html?itemId=/content/publication/3d96efc5-en&_csp_=2c2e680562193998e9d20ed6a45a9242&itemIGO=oecd&itemContentType=book

Period of collection

2017-2020

Data collectors

Guido Alfani (Bocconi University, Dondena Centre and Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality), Sonia Schifano (University of Luxembourg)


See table 5.1 and the section on data quality of the paper for the details on data quality

General references

See the paper for details at https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/3d96efc5-en/1/3/9/index.html?itemId=/content/publication/3d96efc5-en&_csp_=2c2e680562193998e9d20ed6a45a9242&itemIGO=oecd&itemContentType=book]]]

Caribbean

Anguilla[No Data]

Antigua and Barbuda1500 (5)-2013 (21)

Aruba[No Data]

Bahamas1500 (5)-2013 (23)

Barbados1500 (5)-2016 (28)

Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba[No Data]

British Virgin Islands[No Data]

Cayman Islands[No Data]

Cuba1500 (8)-2016 (35)

Curaçao[No Data]

Dominica1500 (5)-2016 (21)

Dominican Republic1500 (6)-2018 (39)

Grenada1500 (5)-2013 (21)

Guadeloupe[No Data]

Haiti1500 (6)-2018 (37)

Jamaica1500 (6)-2018 (36)

Martinique[No Data]

Montserrat[No Data]

In 2010, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) awarded a subsidy to the Clio Infra project, of which Jan Luiten van Zanden was the main applicant and which is hosted by the International Institute of Social History (IISH). Clio Infra has set up a number of interconnected databases containing worldwide data on social, economic, and institutional indicators for the past five centuries, with special attention to the past 200 years. These indicators allow research into long-term development of worldwide economic growth and inequality.

Global inequality is one of the key problems of the contemporary world. Some countries have (recently) become wealthy, other countries have remained poor. New theoretical developments in economics - such as new institutional economics, new economic geography, and new growth theory - and the rise of global economic and social history require such processes to be studied on a worldwide scale. Clio Infra provides datasets for the most important indicators. Economic and social historians from around the world have been working together in thematic collaboratories, in order to collect and share their knowledge concerning the relevant indicators of economic performance and its causes. The collected data have been standardized, harmonized, and stored for future use. New indicators to study inequality have been developed. The datasets are accessible through the Clio Infra portal which also offers possibilities for visualization of the data. Clio Infra offers the opportunity to greatly enhance our understanding of the origins, causes and character of the process of global inequality.