Global Income Inequality, c1880-1960

该项目将根据家庭支出调查的结果，计算19世纪末至1960年代期间世界不平等的新估计数。目前的共识是，工业革命后世界公民不平等程度的所有加剧都发生在大约1950年之前。这一结论在很大程度上是在分析从国民账户得出的全球不平等衡量标准和各种替代衡量标准的基础上得出的。这个项目采取了一种不同的方法。我们计划使用更好的家庭层面的数据来研究这段时期的不平等现象。世界银行等人倡导的有力论据，主张使用根据生活成本差异进行适当调整的家庭调查证据来调查不平等现象。1950年前的全球范围内一般没有这样做，可能是因为没有充分认识到可收回的家庭支出调查证据的范围。我们的调查已经找到了这段时期的大量家庭支出调查。到目前为止，我们已经确定了在19世纪80年代至60年代期间在世界各地进行的大约800项家庭调查，其中约381项调查具有足够的范围，可能有助于调查不平等现象。这些调查的地理分布确实是全球性的：西欧71人；东欧10人；南美洲和中美洲53人；非洲和加勒比地区37人；亚洲88人；中东7人；北美110人；澳大利亚和波利尼西亚5人。我们将从这些报告中提取按收入组别报告的人口和支出数据，并利用这些数据来估计收入分布参数。使用这些估计，我们将调查一些关键国家内不平等的变化性质，并调查1880-1960年全球不平等的时间路径和地理位置。此外，我们将使用这些数据来估计其他生活条件指标，如营养状况，这可能会为工业化对不平等的影响提供进一步的见解。这项提案中概述的研究可能会改变我们对二十世纪上半叶全球生活水平历史和长期经济增长的分配后果的理解。同样，它有可能改变我们对旨在减少不平等的政策的理解。该项目还将留下一批具有巨大未来使用潜力的数据集。

This project will calculate new estimates of world inequality in the period from the end of the nineteenth century until the 1960s, based on the results of household expenditure surveys. The current consensus is that all of the post-industrial revolution increase in inequality amongst world citizens occurred before about 1950. This conclusion has largely been reached on the basis of the analysis of global measures of inequality derived from the national accounts in conjunction with various proxy measures. This project takes a different approach. We plan to investigate inequality in this period using much better, household level, data. There are strong arguments, advocated by the World Bank among others, for investigating inequality using evidence from household surveys suitably adjusted for cost of living differences. This has not generally been carried out for the pre-1950 period at a global level, possibly because the extent of recoverable household expenditure survey evidence has not been fully appreciated. Our investigations have located a vast cache of household expenditure surveys for the period. Thus far, we have identified around 800 household surveys from around the world, carried out between the 1880s and 1960s, of which around 381 are of sufficient scope as to be potentially useful for the investigation of inequality. The geographical spread of these surveys is truly global: 71 from Western Europe; 10 from Eastern Europe; 53 from South and Central America; 37 from Africa and the Caribbean; 88 from Asia; 7 from the Middle East, 110 from North America and 5 from Australia and Polynesia.We will extract the reported demographic and expenditure data by income group from these reports and use them to estimate parameters of the income distribution. Using these estimates, we will investigate the changing nature of inequality within a number of key nation states, and also investigate the time path and geography of global inequality 1880-1960. In addition, we would use these data to estimate other indicators of living conditions, such as nutritional attainment, which may provide further insights into the impact of industrialisation on inequality. The research outlined in this proposal is likely to transform our understanding of the history of global living standards during the first half of the twentieth century and the distributional consequences of long-term economic growth. It has the potential, equally, to transform our understanding of policy designed to reduce inequality. The project will also bequeath a collection of data-sets with significant potential for future use.