Among policymakers and social scientists, one of the most frequently debated and studied issues is income inequality. Many recent reports have focused on a rise in global inequality in recent years. Xavier Sala-i-Martin of Columbia University provides evidence, however, that poverty rates and global income inequality have actually declined over the past couple of decades. Indeed, the decline in global income inequality has been driven primarily by relatively high rates of growth of income for some poorer countries, particularly China. Sala-i-Martin’s analysis also suggests that unless African economies grow in the near future, this trend will reverse and global income inequality will begin to rise. AEI’s Nicholas Eberstadt and Catherine Mann, a scholar at the Institute for International Economics, will comment on Sala-i-Martin’s research.
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