by Partager cet article The World Wealth and Income Database (WID.world) is now available on a new website offering more data visualization tools and more extensive data series. Thanks to the combined efforts of Facundo Alvaredo, Tony Atkinson, Lucas Chancel, Emmanuel Saez, Gabriel Zucman and over 110 researchers covering 70 countries from all over the world, WID.world offers open and convenient access to the most extensive available database on the historical evolution of the global distribution of income and wealth, both within countries and between countries. WID.world was opened to the public on January 9th 2017 in English, and will soon be available in Chinese, Spanish, Arabic and French. Among the new research presented on WID.world, a new study on inequality in the USA, realized with Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman. By comparison with previous studies, our new series offer in particular much more detailed estimates for bottom incomes. With one striking result: the share of bottom 50% incomes dropped from 20% to 12% of total national income between 1980 and 2014, while the share going to the the top 1% rose from 11% to 20% over the same period. Both groups have basically exchanged their respective positions in terms of income shares. This corresponds to a dramatic collapse of the relative position of bottom income groups in US society during this period.
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The World Wealth and Income Database (WID.world) is now available on a new website offering more data visualization tools and more extensive data series.
Thanks to the combined efforts of Facundo Alvaredo, Tony Atkinson, Lucas Chancel, Emmanuel Saez, Gabriel Zucman and over 110 researchers covering 70 countries from all over the world, WID.world offers open and convenient access to the most extensive available database on the historical evolution of the global distribution of income and wealth, both within countries and between countries.
WID.world was opened to the public on January 9th 2017 in English, and will soon be available in Chinese, Spanish, Arabic and French.
Among the new research presented on WID.world, a new study on inequality in the USA, realized with Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman. By comparison with previous studies, our new series offer in particular much more detailed estimates for bottom incomes.
With one striking result: the share of bottom 50% incomes dropped from 20% to 12% of total national income between 1980 and 2014, while the share going to the the top 1% rose from 11% to 20% over the same period. Both groups have basically exchanged their respective positions in terms of income shares. This corresponds to a dramatic collapse of the relative position of bottom income groups in US society during this period. The figure below (also available here) summarizes the situation and is part of thousands of figures and maps which can be easily generated and exported from WID.world.
To be concrete, the average annual income of the bottom 50% has stagnated at about 16000 dollars per adult (expressed in constant dollars 2015), while the average income of the top 1% rose from 27 times to 81 times this amount, that is from a little over 400 000 dollars in 1980 to over 1,3 millions dollars in 2014. Note that top 1% individuals are by construction 50 times less numerous than bottom 50% individuals: if their average income is 27 times higher this is not sufficient to compensate their smaller numerical size; but once their average income is 81 times higher, their share in total income is subtantially higher than that of the bottom 50%.
You will find all these numbers on the website, which will soon be completed to include an interface that can be used to locate oneself in the distribution, in a way that is similar to the website revolution-fiscale.fr released a few years ago, but with a global and historical perspective, rather than being restricted to one country and one year.
The website and database WID.world are still imperfect, so please do not hesitate to contact us in order to help improve them.
The general objective is to promote a new approach to inequality, more international, more participatory, focusing both on rich and emerging countries (with new data already released for China and South Africa, and soon for India and Brasil), covering the entire distribution (from bottom to top, in a way that is consistent with macroeconomic national accounts, both before and after taxes and transfers), and dealing both with income flows and the property of the capital stock.
With an harsh irony, right at the time when we release this new tool designed to promote democratic transparency and the analysis of inequality, Tony Atkinson just passed away on January 1st at the age of 72, after a long illness. Co-founder and co-director of WID.world, he took an active part to the design of this new tool until these last few weeks. His work and ethics will continue through it.