The graph appears on the BBC News's website as part of an In Depth report on Globalisation. This is from the sidebar to the graph:
The world distribution of wealth and income is highly unequal. The richest 10% of households in the world have as much yearly income as the bottom 90%.
Wealth - total assets rather than yearly income – is even more unequal. The rich are concentrated in the US, Europe and Japan, with the richest 1% alone owning 40% of the world's wealth.
Poverty, on the other hand, is widespread across the developing countries - which have five-sixths of the world's population. But it has fallen sharply in China.
3 comments:
the information in the bbc's map doesn't appear to be adjusted for "purchasing power parity" (ppp) -- which is the only way to compare prices in one country against those in another (especially where different currencies are used in each place).
however, that's not to say that global income and wealth are not highly concentrated.
i'm merely pointing out that income and wealth are probably not as highly concentrated when you adjust the data for ppp. see this wikipedia entry for more detail about ppp and a few maps:
http://tinyurl.com/d5n87
to analyze the inequality of income or wealth within a country (or a region of a country or even a group of countries), economists usually rely on the gini coefficient. i've never seen it used on a global scale, but that's probably because the gini coefficient is less and less useful when you look at larger and larger populations. anyway, see this wikipedia entry for more detail about the gini coefficient:
http://tinyurl.com/35oxoc
True, PPP is the best criteria. You even see this within countries themselves.
Just like how people flock to Florida for cheap goods and sunshine.
It's interesting to see this subject even discussed, given how it is usually censored in the US corporate media.
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