[lbo-talk] Interesting Chilean economist, on DN today

[Peter Fay]

On Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 9:54 AM, lbo83235 <lbo83235 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Reading this, it occurred to me that while US inequality as such isn't
> necessarily exceptional, surely the relationship between wealth (on some
> metric of that) and inequality in the US is. I quickly found two links that
> seem to confirm this:
>
> <http://www.mindcontagion.org/html/gini_vs_gdp.html>

I wouldn't put much weight on this graph, as it measures GDP vs GINI - not
too meaningful.  Perhaps better would be change in GDP vs change in GINI


>

<
> http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/2006/01/04/gdp-per-capital-vs-gini-index/
> >
>
> Thi


> Can anyone point me to any other especially interesting work being done on
> Gini vs. other economic metrics?
>

Wiki is has a decent review of the failings of GINI -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient#Disadvantages_of_Gini_coefficient_as_a_measure_of_inequality

1) It measures income distribution instead of wealth distribution - totally
different animals and it masks huge transfers in wealth to the top (e.g. in
US)
2) It masks huge differences when comparing two countries.  The GINI of
Qatar is 40, which is worse than that of Malawi (39).  However infant
mortality (a much better measure of minimal quality of life) in Malawi is
11-fold higher than Qatar.  Income inequality doesn't mean much when 80% of
the country is barely surviving.

-- 
Peter Fay
http://theclearview.wordpress.com