No, parent poster is correct. World Gini coefficient has been consistently dropping since hitting its peak of 0.80 in 1988: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini

No, parent poster is correct. World Gini coefficient has been consistently dropping since hitting its peak of 0.80 in 1988: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient#World_income_Gini_index_since_1800s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient#World_income_... (see second chart) This is also reflected in one of the graphs ("The Global 1% Captured Twice as Much Growth as the Bottom Half") from your link, with the decline in the top 1% since 2009 and the slow increase in the bottom 50% since 2002. The graphs you show are largely broken down by country, and reflect an instance of Simpson's Paradox. [1] Within each individual country, income inequality is rising. However, globally income inequality is falling, because an increasing share of global income is moving from rich countries to poor countries. The super-rich in the U.S. are rapidly outpacing the poor in the U.S., and the super-rich in the China are rapidly outpacing the poor in China, but a large fraction of the huge number of poor people in China are rapidly approaching the middle-class standard of living formerly reserved for the U.S, much more than the number of people that have fallen out of the U.S. middle class. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox