<p>As others have said, the quoted gini coefficients are pre redistribution, so the higher taxes in France are irrelevant.</p>
<p>However, that still begs the question of why Singapore is more equal than France pre redistribution. There are two reasons:</p>
<ol>
<li>The population of Singapore is all urban, while France has a mix of rural and urban populations - rural wealth is lower than urban wealth all else being equal.</li>
<li>France is big, Singapore is small. So Singapore is a single economic zone of a type we might call “global city”. France is several economic zones, Paris is a “global city”, then there are a mix of “local cities” of various sizes, and a mix of different rural areas - these all have widely different economies and widely different real estate markets - one of the biggest sources of <a href="https://www.insee.fr/en/statistiques/fichier/5432533/04_ES526-527_Bonnet-et-al_EN.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">wealth</a>.</li>
</ol>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-23T22:43:04.880Z
Your answer is really interesting and also the paper you quoted is interesting. Could you please write the complete bibliographic reference of the paper, instead of a hyperlinK?  Because the link could, in the future, disappear and the reference would be lost.
BakerStreet
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-24T07:05:21.040Z
@BakerStreet no, but you can
Dale M
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-23T19:49:01.323Z
2024-12-25T01:44:39.837Z
2024-12-25T01:44:39.837Z
Dale M
<p>First of all, inequality it not directly affected by the level of taxes, but its progressivity: how much more the rich pay relative to the poor. A progressive tax system reduces the inequality of post-tax income relative that of pre-tax income. With the data you provided, we can only compare the pre-tax income inequality in France in Singapore, which is not directly affected by taxation. (It could be indirectly affected of you think that higher taxes are used to finance public education, for instance, but it's a stretch).</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-22T22:10:55.967Z
Thanks! I agree with this, it is kind of pointless to compare pre-tax income, especially so if you want to observe the effects of income tax.
KaiSqDist
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-22T18:44:29.923Z
2024-12-22T20:00:26.710Z
2024-12-22T20:00:26.710Z
user53110
<p>The French national statistical institute does a lot of work to measure <a href="https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/7669723" rel="nofollow noreferrer">the effect of the welfare system on inequalities</a>. They define a “pseudo-Gini” index that's meant to reflect the level of income inequality <em>after</em> all taxes and transfers. There is a lot that goes into this and as far as I know there is no standardized methodology that would allow international comparisons but it's a way to get a feel for the impact of these transfers and address your intuition that they should reduce inequalities.</p>
<p>In 2019, income inequalities before taxes and transfers as measured by the Gini index were 0.441 while the pseudo-Gini was 0.188 so the effect seems quite significant. Interestingly, the bulk of it is due to monetary transfers through the welfare system and in-kind benefits (e.g. state contributions to the education and healthcare systems), not so much to the leveling effect of the taxes themselves. In other words, French taxes do not seem that progressive and do not impact the income distribution so much on their own but the benefits they fund have a very significant impact on the living standards of the poorer parts of the population.</p>
<p>At the same time, wealth inequality has <a href="https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/7941439?sommaire=7941491" rel="nofollow noreferrer">consistently been increasing in France over the last decades</a> so while the tax and transfer system seems to do a decent job of smoothing income and living standards, its impact on wealth is less obvious. Inheritance and real estate wealth play a big part in this so there is indeed a generational wealth buildup that taxation and welfare fail to prevent but it is not exactly “centuries old” as the dynamic was quite different during the middle part of the 20th century.</p>
<p>Incidentally, France does not currently have a generic wealth tax but only a tax on real estate wealth.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-26T13:16:29.713Z
Thank you for this helpful reference!
KaiSqDist
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-29T09:17:34.207Z
+1, great answer. Just one question: *wealth inequality has consistently been increasing in France over the last decades* => what about the living standards of the poorest decile? How much living space, how long their lifetime expectancy, access to healthcare, distance to work, etc, are compared to (say) 1990?
JonathanReez
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-29T11:03:47.150Z
@JonathanReez Stable but not increasing since about 2000 (i.e. growth has been entirely captured by the rest of the population). [This page](https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/2417897) provides a series starting in 1996 with some signs of an increase at the very beginning of that period. Broadly speaking, in Western Europe, the whole “tide that lifts all boats” / “everybody has opportunities and gets rewarded for hard work” set of standard arguments to waive off inequalities kind of applies to the decades 1950-1980, not at all since then.
Relaxed
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-29T11:07:07.130Z
There are lots of other reasons to care about inequality but from a fairness / acceptability point of view, this simple fact may be the most salient: it's not that people all benefit equally even if some are richer or that some people benefit more but the poorest still get something because the economy is more productive. Instead, the lowest 3 or 4 decile haven't profited *at all* from recent growth and have very little hope to move to another decile over their lifetime.
Relaxed
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-29T11:12:26.550Z
3 to 4 deciles obviously goes further than all the foreigners or quasi-foreigners you think are disposable and ought to be grateful to get scraps or all the people who are routinely accused of being leeches who are defrauding the welfare state and includes the working poor and people who have a decent but stagnating and increasingly precarious level of income and do not think of themselves as poor.
Relaxed
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-29T11:20:02.253Z
The picture is similar for wealth. There are many reasons to care and track wealth inequality in itself but behind the basic fact of increasing wealth inequality is the broader reality that we are reverting to the regime of the 1920s and earlier where wealth was primarily inherited. Even if we leave aside the 1% and accumulation at the top, people who are moderately wealthy today are likely to have inherited some real estate their parents acquired in the 1980s or earlier. People who don't have that face very tough odds of reaching the same level, even with a successful professional career.
Relaxed
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-29T12:38:39.327Z
Thanks, I’ve cross checked it against OECD data and it matches the linked numbers. However countries with a lower Gini index don’t seen to be doing much better for those in poverty.
JonathanReez
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-29T15:10:11.733Z
@JonathanReez The claim is usually that a higher inequality is not such a big deal or is tolerable because more unequal countries do better in other ways or that measures to fight inequalities depress growth (DVK's point), innovation, or risk sliding towards authoritarianism. If unequal countries merely do “not much worse”, they don't have much going for them.
Relaxed
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-30T02:18:33.647Z
Sorry, what I meant to say is, if you look at OECD’s stats for measures like “can’t keep their house warm in winter” and other objective living standard survey questions you’ll see that there’s little correlation between the level of inequality and the percentage of people who can’t afford basic necessities. I would guess that’s because in developed nations l these metrics primarily depend on the efficiency of the welfare system rather than inequality per se.
JonathanReez
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-30T09:28:40.437Z
@JonathanReez That's not surprising, that's exactly why I wrote earlier that something like the Gini coefficient is especially useful for high income countries. At some point, “absolute” measures will lack any variance and do not measure inequalities anymore.
Relaxed
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-25T22:58:54.880Z
2024-12-26T11:34:30.487Z
2024-12-26T11:34:30.487Z
Relaxed
<blockquote>
<p>How is it possible that despite the greater wealth tax rate applied in France, it still results in a worse wealth inequality situation for its citizens?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The reason why this is the case is that Gini is typically calculated from market income that excludes taxes and benefits.</p>
<p>In fact this is exactly the case as the <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/economic-inequality" rel="noreferrer">World in Our data</a> clearly states for the data you are using;</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Data from the World Inequality Database relates to inequality before taxes and benefits.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Generally many widely used income inequality measures exclude all or most of redistribution. There are inequality metrics that do correct for redistribution and taxes but they are not as easily accessible. Especially in-kind redistribution is extremely difficult to correct for. You will typically have to look in academic works or in some more selective datasets.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Could this be a case of a poorer applied tax system or centuries long wealth buildup that cannot be resolved easily?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>No it is likely because statistics you are using don’t reflect taxes and welfare transfers. There could be also some other dynamics going on but 0.43 and 0.46 might not even be statistically significantly different from each other and since you are using statistics that does exclude all taxes and welfare payments there isn’t that much reason to assume they should be significantly different, they reflect natural levels of inequality generated in market.</p>
<p>If there is a statistically significant difference it could be due to the fact Singapore is highly urbanized (it’s basically just one city) whereas France also has less developed rural regions, and this can also show up in inequality statistics like Gini, since standard Gini does not control for intra-country purchasing power parity differentials. There could be other reasons why market inequality is slightly different, for example different industrial composition. To my best knowledge there is no rigorous research on difference between market inequality in Singapore and France, so we can only speculate.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-22T22:14:35.813Z
Thank you for this excellent and well thought out answer. I hope to find a study that does talk about post-tax income.
KaiSqDist
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-22T22:29:14.267Z
@KaiSqDist there are studies that look at inequality post tax and transfers but I am not aware of any looking at a difference between Singapore and France. There are few studies on US and UK I am aware of, I wouldn’t be surprised if there is some on France, on Singapore I doubt there is a study on this since they are difficult to do and require access to detailed micro data that is widespread only in the west
1muflon1
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-23T13:58:12.467Z
And would these 'income transfers' and market transactions include corrupt practice in the two countries or are those generally kept off the book or offered and accepted in kind and somewhat hard to correct for as well?
civitas
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-23T18:55:14.980Z
No, non-market activity is not included, because it’s not being tracked
1muflon1
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-22T19:58:44.400Z
2024-12-22T21:54:32.160Z
2024-12-22T21:54:32.160Z
1muflon1
<p>As the title suggests, and my source (in 2022) being - <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/economic-inequality" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://ourworldindata.org/economic-inequality</a></p>
<p>SG (FR) has a gini coefficient of 0.43 (0.46), where a lower gini coefficient represents lower wealth inequality.</p>
<p>How is it possible that despite the greater wealth tax rate applied in France, it still results in a worse wealth inequality situation for its citizens?</p>
<p>Could this be a case of a poorer applied tax system or centuries long wealth buildup that cannot be resolved easily?</p>
<p>EDIT
I thought this video might be helpful for others who would like to understand more about the topic of wealth inequality:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot4qdCs54ZE&amp;ab_channel=EconomicsExplained" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot4qdCs54ZE&amp;ab_channel=EconomicsExplained</a></p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-22T20:02:49.647Z
A more significant comparision in your data would be that the Gini coefficient in Singapore was around 0.55 as little as 10 years ago (whereas the French one has been roughly constant for decades). This decrease is a lot more significant that your difference between countries but I unfortunately have no idea what caused it.
quarague
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-23T12:37:13.650Z
The Gini data you link to is income inequality (before taxes and benefits) not wealth inequality
Henry
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-23T12:46:51.483Z
The SG figure of 0.43 in 2022 is their first data since 0.54 in 2013, a long gap and  dramatic change suggesting some methodology issues.
Henry
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-23T17:21:27.607Z
A high enough level of taxes stifles economic activity. Which in turn stifeles economic opportunities (in terms of both new jobs hiring, income growth for existing jobs, and having your own self-employment). Which in turn would make Gini coefficient worse. The way to reduce inequality isn't (necessarily, or even mainly) to tax the rich and give that money to the poor. It's to provide better paying jobs to some poor, and allow others to have their own business. If you tax the rich 100%, you won't have a better outcome for the poor. You will have long term collapsed economy, since nobody would b
DVK
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-25T16:02:26.997Z
The Gini index in itself is highly flawed because it presupposes that one cannot have a nice society if inequality is high, even if the standard of living is incredibly high (by global standards) for the poorest 10%. IMO it just doesn't make sense to use it past a certain wealth point.
JonathanReez
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-25T22:20:22.307Z
@JonathanReez If anything, it's absolute measures of poverty that lack any discriminatory power and become hopelessly flawed past a certain wealth point, that's exactly where relative measures like the Gini coefficient make the most sense. It doesn't really presuppose anything, it's a just a measure. Surely, your own contention that inequality is just fine would be buttressed by evidence that it is not related to any outcome of interest… Or is not knowing about inequality all the evidence you need?
Relaxed
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-26T05:08:51.257Z
@Relaxed I want to know what quality of living is accessible to the poorest 10%. If they have reasonably good housing with heating (and A/C, if further south than Denmark), access to modern medicine, good dietary options and have jobs other than back breaking labor available to them, why would the Gini index at all matter? The existence of an “underclass” only matters while those people have a difficult and unpleasant life. And another problem is that Gini indexes take people without citizenship or permanent residency into account, which also makes no sense.
JonathanReez
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-26T10:13:46.030Z
@JonathanReez There is a whole literature on why inequality and poverty matter above and beyond that but my point is much more fundamental: to even ask the question “Why would the Gini index at all matter?“ the first step is to actually measure it. And from a descriptive point of view or in a basic utilitarian framework, people without citizenship or permanent residency matter exactly as much as citizens. I know you think it should not matter from a legal or ethical point of view but that's completely irrelevant here.
Relaxed
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-27T08:12:11.877Z
@Relaxed will do a proper write up soon, including a debunking of said 'literature'.
JonathanReez
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-27T11:16:01.387Z
@JonathanReez Don't bother, that wasn't even my point and this is a Q&A website.
Relaxed
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-27T21:32:29.497Z
@Relaxed yes correct and this is a classic X\Y question where the true answer needs a deeper explanation
JonathanReez
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-27T21:41:12.320Z
@JonathanReez Not at all, it's a simple question on the definition of a measure… You're the only one who seems unable to separate the descriptive and normative aspects of the question.
Relaxed
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-12-28T00:03:43.260Z
@KaiSqDist would you be interested in answer pointing out that using Gini for both France and Singapore is a mistake due to their wealth levels?
JonathanReez
<microeconomics><macroeconomics><inequality><wealth><gini>
Why does a country like Singapore have a lower gini coefficient than France despite France having higher income/wealth taxes?
KaiSqDist
# Why does a country like Singapore have a lower gini coefficient than France despite France having higher income/wealth taxes?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2024-12-22)

As the title suggests, and my source (in 2022) being - <https://ourworldindata.org/economic-inequality>

SG (FR) has a gini coefficient of 0.43 (0.46), where a lower gini coefficient represents lower wealth inequality.

How is it possible that despite the greater wealth tax rate applied in France, it still results in a worse wealth inequality situation for its citizens?

Could this be a case of a poorer applied tax system or centuries long wealth buildup that cannot be resolved easily?

EDIT
I thought this video might be helpful for others who would like to understand more about the topic of wealth inequality:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot4qdCs54ZE&ab_channel=EconomicsExplained>

**Tags:** microeconomics, macroeconomics, inequality, wealth, gini

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: A more significant comparision in your data would be that the Gini coefficient in Singapore was around 0.55 as little as 10 years ago (whereas the French one has been roughly constant for decades). This decrease is a lot more significant that your difference between countries but I unfortunately have no idea what caused it.  
> **username_2**: The Gini data you link to is income inequality (before taxes and benefits) not wealth inequality  
> **username_2**: The SG figure of 0.43 in 2022 is their first data since 0.54 in 2013, a long gap and  dramatic change suggesting some methodology issues.  
> **username_3**: A high enough level of taxes stifles economic activity. Which in turn stifeles economic opportunities (in terms of both new jobs hiring, income growth for existing jobs, and having your own self-employment). Which in turn would make Gini coefficient worse. The way to reduce inequality isn't (necessarily, or even mainly) to tax the rich and give that money to the poor. It's to provide better paying jobs to some poor, and allow others to have their own business. If you tax the rich 100%, you won't have a better outcome for the poor. You will have long term collapsed economy, since nobody would b  
> **username_4**: The Gini index in itself is highly flawed because it presupposes that one cannot have a nice society if inequality is high, even if the standard of living is incredibly high (by global standards) for the poorest 10%. IMO it just doesn't make sense to use it past a certain wealth point.  
> **username_5**: @username_4 If anything, it's absolute measures of poverty that lack any discriminatory power and become hopelessly flawed past a certain wealth point, that's exactly where relative measures like the Gini coefficient make the most sense. It doesn't really presuppose anything, it's a just a measure. Surely, your own contention that inequality is just fine would be buttressed by evidence that it is not related to any outcome of interest… Or is not knowing about inequality all the evidence you need?  
> **username_4**: @username_5 I want to know what quality of living is accessible to the poorest 10%. If they have reasonably good housing with heating (and A/C, if further south than Denmark), access to modern medicine, good dietary options and have jobs other than back breaking labor available to them, why would the Gini index at all matter? The existence of an “underclass” only matters while those people have a difficult and unpleasant life. And another problem is that Gini indexes take people without citizenship or permanent residency into account, which also makes no sense.  
> **username_5**: @username_4 There is a whole literature on why inequality and poverty matter above and beyond that but my point is much more fundamental: to even ask the question “Why would the Gini index at all matter?“ the first step is to actually measure it. And from a descriptive point of view or in a basic utilitarian framework, people without citizenship or permanent residency matter exactly as much as citizens. I know you think it should not matter from a legal or ethical point of view but that's completely irrelevant here.  
> **username_4**: @username_5 will do a proper write up soon, including a debunking of said 'literature'.  
> **username_5**: @username_4 Don't bother, that wasn't even my point and this is a Q&A website.  
> **username_4**: @username_5 yes correct and this is a classic X\Y question where the true answer needs a deeper explanation  
> **username_5**: @username_4 Not at all, it's a simple question on the definition of a measure… You're the only one who seems unable to separate the descriptive and normative aspects of the question.  
> **username_4**: @username_0 would you be interested in answer pointing out that using Gini for both France and Singapore is a mistake due to their wealth levels?  

---

## 4 answers

### Answer by username_9 on 2024-12-22. Score: 17 | Accepted answer

> How is it possible that despite the greater wealth tax rate applied in France, it still results in a worse wealth inequality situation for its citizens?

The reason why this is the case is that Gini is typically calculated from market income that excludes taxes and benefits.

In fact this is exactly the case as the [World in Our data](https://ourworldindata.org/economic-inequality) clearly states for the data you are using;

> Data from the World Inequality Database relates to inequality before taxes and benefits.

Generally many widely used income inequality measures exclude all or most of redistribution. There are inequality metrics that do correct for redistribution and taxes but they are not as easily accessible. Especially in-kind redistribution is extremely difficult to correct for. You will typically have to look in academic works or in some more selective datasets.

> Could this be a case of a poorer applied tax system or centuries long wealth buildup that cannot be resolved easily?

No it is likely because statistics you are using don’t reflect taxes and welfare transfers. There could be also some other dynamics going on but 0.43 and 0.46 might not even be statistically significantly different from each other and since you are using statistics that does exclude all taxes and welfare payments there isn’t that much reason to assume they should be significantly different, they reflect natural levels of inequality generated in market.

If there is a statistically significant difference it could be due to the fact Singapore is highly urbanized (it’s basically just one city) whereas France also has less developed rural regions, and this can also show up in inequality statistics like Gini, since standard Gini does not control for intra-country purchasing power parity differentials. There could be other reasons why market inequality is slightly different, for example different industrial composition. To my best knowledge there is no rigorous research on difference between market inequality in Singapore and France, so we can only speculate.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: Thank you for this excellent and well thought out answer. I hope to find a study that does talk about post-tax income.  
> **username_9**: @username_0 there are studies that look at inequality post tax and transfers but I am not aware of any looking at a difference between Singapore and France. There are few studies on US and UK I am aware of, I wouldn’t be surprised if there is some on France, on Singapore I doubt there is a study on this since they are difficult to do and require access to detailed micro data that is widespread only in the west  
> **username_10**: And would these 'income transfers' and market transactions include corrupt practice in the two countries or are those generally kept off the book or offered and accepted in kind and somewhat hard to correct for as well?  
> **username_9**: No, non-market activity is not included, because it’s not being tracked  

---

### Answer by username_6 on 2024-12-23. Score: 6

As others have said, the quoted gini coefficients are pre redistribution, so the higher taxes in France are irrelevant.

However, that still begs the question of why Singapore is more equal than France pre redistribution. There are two reasons:

1. The population of Singapore is all urban, while France has a mix of rural and urban populations - rural wealth is lower than urban wealth all else being equal.
2. France is big, Singapore is small. So Singapore is a single economic zone of a type we might call “global city”. France is several economic zones, Paris is a “global city”, then there are a mix of “local cities” of various sizes, and a mix of different rural areas - these all have widely different economies and widely different real estate markets - one of the biggest sources of [wealth](https://www.insee.fr/en/statistiques/fichier/5432533/04_ES526-527_Bonnet-et-al_EN.pdf).

> **Comments:**
> **username_7**: Your answer is really interesting and also the paper you quoted is interesting. Could you please write the complete bibliographic reference of the paper, instead of a hyperlinK?  Because the link could, in the future, disappear and the reference would be lost.  
> **username_6**: @username_7 no, but you can  

---

### Answer by username_8 on 2024-12-22. Score: 4

First of all, inequality it not directly affected by the level of taxes, but its progressivity: how much more the rich pay relative to the poor. A progressive tax system reduces the inequality of post-tax income relative that of pre-tax income. With the data you provided, we can only compare the pre-tax income inequality in France in Singapore, which is not directly affected by taxation. (It could be indirectly affected of you think that higher taxes are used to finance public education, for instance, but it's a stretch).

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: Thanks! I agree with this, it is kind of pointless to compare pre-tax income, especially so if you want to observe the effects of income tax.  

---

### Answer by username_5 on 2024-12-25. Score: 2

The French national statistical institute does a lot of work to measure [the effect of the welfare system on inequalities](https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/7669723). They define a “pseudo-Gini” index that's meant to reflect the level of income inequality *after* all taxes and transfers. There is a lot that goes into this and as far as I know there is no standardized methodology that would allow international comparisons but it's a way to get a feel for the impact of these transfers and address your intuition that they should reduce inequalities.

In 2019, income inequalities before taxes and transfers as measured by the Gini index were 0.441 while the pseudo-Gini was 0.188 so the effect seems quite significant. Interestingly, the bulk of it is due to monetary transfers through the welfare system and in-kind benefits (e.g. state contributions to the education and healthcare systems), not so much to the leveling effect of the taxes themselves. In other words, French taxes do not seem that progressive and do not impact the income distribution so much on their own but the benefits they fund have a very significant impact on the living standards of the poorer parts of the population.

At the same time, wealth inequality has [consistently been increasing in France over the last decades](https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/7941439?sommaire=7941491) so while the tax and transfer system seems to do a decent job of smoothing income and living standards, its impact on wealth is less obvious. Inheritance and real estate wealth play a big part in this so there is indeed a generational wealth buildup that taxation and welfare fail to prevent but it is not exactly “centuries old” as the dynamic was quite different during the middle part of the 20th century.

Incidentally, France does not currently have a generic wealth tax but only a tax on real estate wealth.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: Thank you for this helpful reference!  
> **username_4**: +1, great answer. Just one question: *wealth inequality has consistently been increasing in France over the last decades* => what about the living standards of the poorest decile? How much living space, how long their lifetime expectancy, access to healthcare, distance to work, etc, are compared to (say) 1990?  
> **username_5**: @username_4 Stable but not increasing since about 2000 (i.e. growth has been entirely captured by the rest of the population). [This page](https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/2417897) provides a series starting in 1996 with some signs of an increase at the very beginning of that period. Broadly speaking, in Western Europe, the whole “tide that lifts all boats” / “everybody has opportunities and gets rewarded for hard work” set of standard arguments to waive off inequalities kind of applies to the decades 1950-1980, not at all since then.  
> **username_5**: There are lots of other reasons to care about inequality but from a fairness / acceptability point of view, this simple fact may be the most salient: it's not that people all benefit equally even if some are richer or that some people benefit more but the poorest still get something because the economy is more productive. Instead, the lowest 3 or 4 decile haven't profited *at all* from recent growth and have very little hope to move to another decile over their lifetime.  
> **username_5**: 3 to 4 deciles obviously goes further than all the foreigners or quasi-foreigners you think are disposable and ought to be grateful to get scraps or all the people who are routinely accused of being leeches who are defrauding the welfare state and includes the working poor and people who have a decent but stagnating and increasingly precarious level of income and do not think of themselves as poor.  
> **username_5**: The picture is similar for wealth. There are many reasons to care and track wealth inequality in itself but behind the basic fact of increasing wealth inequality is the broader reality that we are reverting to the regime of the 1920s and earlier where wealth was primarily inherited. Even if we leave aside the 1% and accumulation at the top, people who are moderately wealthy today are likely to have inherited some real estate their parents acquired in the 1980s or earlier. People who don't have that face very tough odds of reaching the same level, even with a successful professional career.  
> **username_4**: Thanks, I’ve cross checked it against OECD data and it matches the linked numbers. However countries with a lower Gini index don’t seen to be doing much better for those in poverty.  
> **username_5**: @username_4 The claim is usually that a higher inequality is not such a big deal or is tolerable because more unequal countries do better in other ways or that measures to fight inequalities depress growth (DVK's point), innovation, or risk sliding towards authoritarianism. If unequal countries merely do “not much worse”, they don't have much going for them.  
> **username_4**: Sorry, what I meant to say is, if you look at OECD’s stats for measures like “can’t keep their house warm in winter” and other objective living standard survey questions you’ll see that there’s little correlation between the level of inequality and the percentage of people who can’t afford basic necessities. I would guess that’s because in developed nations l these metrics primarily depend on the efficiency of the welfare system rather than inequality per se.  
> **username_5**: @username_4 That's not surprising, that's exactly why I wrote earlier that something like the Gini coefficient is especially useful for high income countries. At some point, “absolute” measures will lack any variance and do not measure inequalities anymore.  

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