The World Inequality Report

Examining the World Inequality Report—…by the creators of the World Wealth and Income Database, who include the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez—it is tempting to see the rising concentration of incomes as some sort of unstoppable force of nature, an economic inevitability driven by globalization and technology… And yet, a careful examination of the data suggests there is nothing inevitable about untrammeled inequality. – Eduardo Porter and Karl Russell * New York Times *Back in 1980, the bottom 50 percent of wage-earners in the United States earned about 21 percent of all income in the country—nearly twice as much as the share of income (11 percent) earned by the top 1 percent of Americans. But today, according to [World Inequality Report 2018], those numbers have nearly reversed: the bottom 50 percent only take in 13 percent of the income pie, while the top 1 percent grab over 20 percent of the country’s income. – Christopher Ingraham * Chicago Tribune *The 2018 World Inequality Report shows the share of wealth held by the top 1% of earners in the U.S. doubled from 10% to 20% between 1980 and 2016, while the bottom 50% fell from 20% to 13% in the same period. – Kofi Annan * Quartz *Sure to become a standard source for data on income and wealth inequality. – Richard N. Cooper * Foreign Affairs *Three and a half years ago, the English publication of Thomas Piketty’s surprise bestseller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, sparked an international debate about the roots of rising inequality. Today, [World Inequality Report 2018] makes for equally sobering reading: The gap between rich and poor has increased in nearly every region in the world over the past few decades. – Eshe Nelson * Quartz *Sure to spark discussion on national policy and its effects on wealth and inequality, making it a much-needed resource. – Muhammed Hassanali * Booklist *

Facundo Alvaredo is Codirector of the World Wealth and Income Database (WID.world) and of the World Inequality Lab. Lucas Chancel is Affiliate Professor at Sciences Po and Codirector of the World Inequality Lab at the Paris School of Economics. Thomas Piketty is Professor of Economics and Economic History at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences and the Paris School of Economics. His books include A Brief History of Equality, Capital and Ideology, and the bestselling Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Emmanuel Saez is Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and Director of the Center for Equitable Growth. Gabriel Zucman is Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and Director of the EU Tax Observatory.