Ranaldi, Marco;
(2025)
Global Distributions of Capital and Labor Incomes:
Capitalization of the Global Middle Class.
World Development
, 188
, Article 106849. 10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106849.
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Abstract
This article studies the global distributions of capital and labor incomes among individuals in 2000 and 2016. By constructing a novel database covering approximately 80% of the global output and 60% of the world population, two major findings stand out. First, the world underwent an important process of capitalization. The share of world individuals with positive capital income rose from 20% to 32%. Second, the global middle class benefited the most, in relative terms, from such a capitalization process, with China being the main driver of this global trend. The findings of this paper are robust to changes in the income definition, top-income and functional income distribution adjustments. The global composition of capital and labor incomes is more equal today than it was twenty years ago.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Global Distributions of Capital and Labor Incomes: Capitalization of the Global Middle Class |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106849 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106849 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
| Keywords: | Global inequality; Capital and labor; Compositional inequality |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10202742 |
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