Life Isn’t Fair – But It’s Fairer in Some Countries…

I love a good graph.

On the left is a percentile representing the worlds richest people (100) and poorest people (1). On the bottom axis are the four countries noted split up into 20 equal tranches of their population (the poorest 5%: 1  –  to the richest 5%: 20).

Brazil, for example, has some of the poorest people on earth, those in the very lowest percentile of ‘world income distribution’. It also has some of those in the highest percentiles as the line snaking upwards and to the right shows. It is, therefore, a highly unequal country.

Interestingly, this graph shows that the poorest ventile in America is still richer that the richest ventile in India. And that

the typical person in the bottom 5 percent of the American income distribution is still richer than 68 percent of the world’s inhabitants.

Hat tip:

@jason_burke – who wrote the seminal book on Al Qaeda

by David Roberts

David B Roberts is a Phd student at Durham University, UK focusing on Persian Gulf international relations, with a particular interest in Qatar's foreign policy. He has lived throughout the Middle East, speaks Arabic with varying degrees of success and is the creator of www.thegulfblog.com

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