Is economic inequality around the world getting better or worse?
CRITICS of capitalism are convinced that the gap between rich and poor is widening across the world. For them, the claim amounts almost to an article of faith: worsening inequality is a sure sign of the moral bankruptcy of the system. Whether rising inequality should in fact be seen as condemning capitalism in this way is a question worth addressing in its own right. There are reasons to doubt it. But it would also be interesting to know the answer to the narrow factual question. Is the familiar claim that capitalism makes global inequality worse actually true? Unfortunately, this apparently straightforward question turns out to be harder to answer than one might suppose. There are three broad areas of difficulty. The first is measuring what people, especially the poorest people in developing countries, consume. The second is valuing consumption in a way that allows useful comparisons to be made across countries and over time. And the third, in effect, is settling on an appropriate bas
