Gini coefficient
Gini coefficient
!World map of Gini coefficients (as a %), 2022, according to the Poverty and Inequality Platform (PIP)
Gini coefficient
Corrado Gini proposed the Gini coefficient as a measure of inequality of income or wealth. For OECD countries in the late 20th century, considering the effect of taxes and transfer payments, the income Gini coefficient ranged between 0.24 and 0.49, with Slovakia being the lowest and Mexico the highest. African countries had the highest pre-tax Gini coefficients in 2008–2009, with South Africa having the world's highest, estimated to be 0.63 to 0.7. However, this figure drops to 0.52 after social assistance is taken into account and drops again to 0.47 after taxation. Slovakia has the lowest Gini coefficient, with a Gini coefficient of 0.232. Various sources have estimated the Gini coefficient of the global income in 2005 to be between 0.61 and 0.68.
Gini coefficient
There are multiple issues in interpreting a Gini coefficient, as the same value may result from many different distribution curves. The demographic structure should be taken into account to mitigate this. Countries with an aging population or those with an increased birth rate experience an increasing pre-tax Gini coefficient even if real income distribution for working adults remains constant. Many scholars have devised over a dozen variants of the Gini coefficient.
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