The Evolution of the World Income Distribution

Keith Sill

Senior Vice President of Research and Director of the Real-Time Data Research Center

Q2 2008

Business Review — There is tremendous disparity in the levels of individuals’ incomes across countries. However, this disparity in per capita income has not always existed.

In this article, Keith Sill investigates some facts about the evolution of per capita income across countries and reviews a simple model that broadly captures the observed evolution of the world income distribution since 1800. He then discusses what predictions can be made about future cross-country distributions of income and some policy prescriptions that follow from our understanding of the past and our predictions about the future.

This article appeared in the Second Quarter 2008 edition of Business Review.

View the Full Article