the.com/income inequality
the gap between who owns the ladder and who just climbs it.
means the uneven way money and wealth get divided across a population, measured by how much richer the top is than the bottom.
from tracked since the early 1900s via the gini coefficient, an italian statistician's 1912 attempt to turn inequality into a single tidy number between 0 and 1.
gini coefficient0 is perfect equality, 1 is one person owns everything
top 1 percentglobally owns nearly half of all wealth
great gatsby curvemore inequality tracks with less social mobility
for instance
south africa — highest gini in the world, legacy of apartheid-era land splits
united states 1928 — top 1 percent income share peaked right before the crash
nordic model — denmark and norway keep gini scores near 0.25 via heavy redistribution