Science Fair Project Encyclopedia The Gini coefficient is a
measure of inequality developed by the Italian statistician
Corrado Gini and published in his 1912 paper "Variabilità e
mutabilità". It is usually used to measure income inequality,
but can be used to measure any form of uneven distribution. The
Gini coefficient is a number between 0 and 1, where 0
corresponds with perfect equality (where everyone has the same
income) and 1 corresponds with perfect inequality (where one
person has all the income, and everyone else has zero income).
The Gini index is the Gini coefficient expressed in percentage
form, and is equal to the Gini coefficient multiplied by 100.
While the Gini coefficient is mostly used to measure income
inequality, it can also be used to measure wealth inequality.
This use requires that no one has a negative net wealth. The
small sample variance properties of G are not known, and large
sample approximations to the variance of G are poor. In order
for G to be an unbiased estimate of the true