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Quality Assessment
The Opportunity Cost of English Language Education

Human Development Report 2002

Income or Consumption Inequality - An international Comparison


Table 36
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Table 36 Income or consumption inequality - An international comparison

 
   Share of income or consumption1   Inequality measures2

 HDI Rank3 Year   Poorest 10% Poorest 20% Richest 20% Richest 10%   Richest 10% to poorest 10% Richest 20% to poorest 20%   GINI Index4
 
China 96 1998   2.4  5.9  46.6  30.4    12.7  8.0    40.3
England and Wales (UK) 13 1995   2.2 6.1 43.2 27.7   12.3 7.1   36.8
France 12 1995   2.8 7.2 40.2 25.1   9.1 5.6   32.7
Germany 17 1994   3.3 8.2 38.5 23.7   7.1 4.7   30.0
Hong Kong5  23 2001   0.9  3.2  56.5  41.2    45.8 17.6   52.5
Japan 9 1993   4.8 10.6 35.6 21.7   4.5 3.4   24.8
Singapore 25                      
South Korea1 27 1993   2.9  7.5  39.3  24.3    8.4  5.3    31.6
United States 6 1997   1.8 5.2 46.4 30.5   16.6 9.0   40.8
 
Source: United Nations Development Program. 2002. Human development report 2002. Table 13 Inequality in income or consumption. [online document - pdf format] (12 November 2002). Original source: World Bank.
Source: See Note 5 below)
Note1: The distribution of income is typically more unequal than the distribution of consumption. Only South Korea's share of income and inequality measures are based on consumption. All others are based on income. Thus, South Korea's Gini coefficient is somewhat exaggerated toward more inequality.
Note2: Data show the ratio of the income or consumption share of the richest group to that of the poorest.
Note3: The ranks provided are for the year 2002. The income and consumption data are from the years shown. HDI rank order is from lowest to highest. The best possible score is one.
Note4: The Gini index measures inequality over the entire distribution of income or consumption.A value of 0 represents perfect equality,and a value of 100 perfect inequality.
Note5: As data for Hong Kong and Singapore were not available from the UNDP 2002 report, a special request from the Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department was required. Please see the source information at the bottom of table 35 for details.
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