A Study of the Historical Changes in Global Income Distribution : With special reference to Asian countries

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Sugihara read a paper in the annual conference of the World History Association at Boston in June 2000 and the 19^<th> International Congress of Historical Sciences at Oslo in August 2000, to report the findings of this project. After further discussion in London with area studies experts in London, he revised the paper and published it as a working paper in October. Earlier on he also published a short piece in a national daily, to reach wider audience. The main finding of these publications is that, while global income inequality progressively worsened between 1820 and around the middle of the twentieth century, this tendency was arrested during the second half of that century. He argued that historical events of global significance, such as the industrial revolution, must be interpreted against this finding.Ikemoto continued the input and analysis of the data, originally compiled by Professor Maddison, and calculated the Gini coefficient for the period from 1820 to 1990. By dividing into several periods, he attempted to interpret trends and changes. In particular, he focused on the way in which the high-speed growth of East Asia, while temporarily widening the income gaps within the region, eventually contributed the reduction of global income inequality. An unpublished manuscript by Ikemoto will be included in our report, and will be published in the near future.Through frequent meeting and communication, the two researchers tried to interpret the two important findings, long-term trend over the period of 180 years and rapid changes in the postwar years, in a coherent way.