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Growing Unequal?

Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries

Growing Unequal? brings together a range of analyses on the distribution of economic resources in OECD countries. The evidence on income distribution and poverty covers, for the first time, all 30 OECD countries in the mid-2000s, while information on trends extending back to the mid-1980s is provided for around two-thirds of the countries. The report also describes inequalities in a range of domains (such as household wealth, consumption patterns, in-kind public services) that are typically excluded from conventional discussion about the distribution of economic resources among individuals and households. The report provides evidence of a fairly generalised increase in income inequality over the past two decades across the OECD, but the timing, intensity and causes of the increase differ from what is typically suggested in the media. Precisely how much inequality there is in a society is not determined randomly, nor is it beyond the power of governments to change, so long as they take note of the sort of up-to-date evidence included in this report.

This report includes StatLinks, URLs linking tables and graphs in the book to Excel® spreadsheets containing the data.

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Publication Date :: 21 Oct 2008
DOI :: 10.1787/9789264044197-en

Chapter

Earnings and Income Inequality

Understanding the Links

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Authors:: OECD


Pages :: 77–95
DOI :: 10.1787/9789264044197-5-en

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Wage disparities among full-time workers have increased over the past two decades. These disparities are much wider when looking at personal earnings of all workers, reflecting differences in the amount of work performed over the year. When looking at the distribution across the entire working-age population – whether working or not – the concentration of household earnings has remained broadly stable over the past decade, while that of capital and self-employment income has increased markedly.

Also available in: French