[lbo-talk] India's GINI Index

Yoshie Furuhashi critical.montages at gmail.com
Mon Sep 18 14:42:23 PDT 2006


On 9/18/06, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Sep 17, 2006, at 3:59 PM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> > I was wondering why India's GINI index in the UNDP Human Development
> > Reports (32.5, compared to Iran's 43.0 and Venezuela's 49.1 at
> > <http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/data/indicators.cfm?x=148&y=2&z=1>)
> > looked so good -- too good to be true! -- but this article solves the
> > mystery.
>
> Except that it doesn't reveal what the income gini is for India, or
> the consumption ginis for Iran or Venezuela, so we still don't know
> the countries' relative standings. The World Bank's Branko Milanovic
> had urban India's gini at .345 in 1993, and its rural gini at .287.
>
> Iran's income gini is abysmal, however.

The UNDP says this about India, Iran, and Venezuela:

India Human poverty index (HPI-1) Rank 58 Human Poverty Index (HPI-1) Value (%) 31.3 Probability at birth of not surviving to age 40 (% of cohort), 2000-05 16.6 Adult illiteracy rate (% ages 15 and above), 2003 39.0 Population without sustainable access to an improved water source (%), 2002 14 Children underweight for age (% under age 5) (HPI..1), 1995-2003 47 Population living below $1 a day (%), 1990-2003 34.7 Population living below $2 a day (%), 1990-2003 79.9 Population living below the national poverty line (%), 1990-2002 28.6 HPI-1 rank minus income poverty rank - 12 <http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/data/countries.cfm?c=IND>

Iran Human poverty index (HPI-1) Rank 36 Human Poverty Index (HPI-1) Value (%) 16.4 Probability at birth of not surviving to age 40 (% of cohort), 2000-05 7.2 Adult illiteracy rate (% ages 15 and above), 2003 23.0 Population without sustainable access to an improved water source (%), 2002 7 Children underweight for age (% under age 5) (HPI..1), 1995-2003 11 Population living below $1 a day (%), 1990-2003 .. Population living below $2 a day (%), 1990-2003 7.3 Population living below the national poverty line (%), 1990-2002 .. HPI-1 rank minus income poverty rank 22 <http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/data/countries.cfm?c=IRN>

Venezuela Human poverty index (HPI-1) Rank 14 Human Poverty Index (HPI-1) Value (%) 8.8 Probability at birth of not surviving to age 40 (% of cohort), 2000-05 8.2 Adult illiteracy rate (% ages 15 and above), 2003 7.0 Population without sustainable access to an improved water source (%), 2002 17 Children underweight for age (% under age 5) (HPI..1), 1995-2003 4 Population living below $1 a day (%), 1990-2003 15.0 Population living below $2 a day (%), 1990-2003 32.0 Population living below the national poverty line (%), 1990-2002 31.3 HPI-1 rank minus income poverty rank - 19 <http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/data/countries.cfm?c=VEN>

A majority of Indians are a lot poorer and worse off than a majority of Iranians or Venezuelans, but it's possible that there is still more of equality of poverty in India (notwithstanding tales of two Indias) than in Iran and Venezuela. Oil rentier states may be easier for a small ruling class to exploit than other kinds of states. Some economists (mainly neoliberal, to be sure) speak of a "resource curse," which may have a grain of truth to it, though it must be said that the social and economic structures of Iran and Venezuela are much less artificial than those of the Gulf states'.

That said, Iran's and Venezuela's GINI indexes aren't as bad as Brazil's (59.3) or South Africa's (57.8), according to the UNDP HDRs: <http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/data/indicators.cfm?x=148&y=2&z=1>.

On the other end of the GINI index hierarchy, Japan is second only to Denmark in the UNDP HDR's economic egalitarianism. No wonder that the Left has not done well in Japan -- the right-wing power elite have delivered.

-- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>



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