Gini Coefficient by Country 2022

If the Gini coefficient, also known as the GINI index or Gini ratio, is high, the difference between the wealthiest and poorest individuals in a nation widens; this is referred to as income inequality.

Income disparity has a variety of negative political and economic ramifications, which is why a country’s Gini coefficient is so significant. Economic growth has slowed, family debt has increased, the political division has intensified, and the number of people living in poverty has increased.

Explaining the Gini coefficient

Gini coefficients vary from 0 to 1 but are often expressed as percentages. They were created in 1912 by Italian statistician Corrado Gini. A nation’s Gini coefficient would be zero if, like in the hypothetical cases above, everyone in the country made the same amount of money (0 percent ).

On the other hand, the Gini coefficient would be 1 if just one individual in a country earned all of the nation’s income (100 percent ). The Lorenz curve is used to calculate the Gini coefficient.

According to the measure of wealth or income, the Lorenz curve depicts the percentiles of the population along the graph’s horizontal axis. The vertical axis shows the total wealth or income of the population.

The Gini coefficient’s limitations

Despite its usefulness, the Gini coefficient does not accurately picture a country’s total wealth or income. For example, the Central African Republic has a Gini coefficient almost ten times the global average (61.3 in this case).

The Gini coefficients of high- and low-income countries may be the same. In addition, the Gini coefficient may overestimate income disparity and be erroneous because of restrictions such as valid GDP and income statistics.

Gini coefficients in countries with the greatest and lowest

Because South Africa has the world’s highest Gini coefficient of 63.0, it ranks as its most unequal nation. To be fair, the Gini coefficient climbed to a record high of 65.0 in 2005.

The wealthiest ten percent of South Africans own 71% of the country’s wealth, while the lowest 60% own only 7%. More than half of South Africa’s people are living in poverty.

The World Bank has compiled a list of the top 10 countries with the largest Gini coefficients (percent):

• South Africa – 2014 – 63.0
• Namibia – 2015 – 59.1
• Suriname – 1999 – 57.9
• Zambia – 2015 – 57.1
• Sao Tome and Principe – 2017 – 56.3
• Central African Republic – 2008 – 56.2
• Eswatini – 2016 – 54.6
• Mozambique – 2014 – 54.0
• Brazil – 2019 – 53.4
• Belize – 1999 – 53.3

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Regarding Gini Coefficients, the following 10 countries have the lowest values (in percent).

• Slovenia – 2018 – 24.6
• Czech Republic – 2018 – 25.0 (tie)
• Slovakia – 2018 – 25.0 (tie)
• Belarus – 2019 – 25.3
• Moldova – 2018 – 25.7
• United Arab Emirates – 2018 – 26.0
• Iceland – 2017 – 26.1
• Azerbaijan – 2005 – 26.6 (tie)
• Ukraine – 2019 – 26.6 (tie)
• Belgium – 2018 – 27.2

Seven of the top 10 spots on this ranking belong to Nordic and Central Eastern European countries. The Gini coefficient shows that inequality is lower in Europe than in the rest of the globe.

The Gini coefficient for the United States is 41.1. In the United States, the richest one percent of earners made an average of 40 times as much money as the bottom ninety percent in 2015.

In the United States, poverty is rising, with an estimated 12.3-18.1 percent of the population falling below the poverty line (see Poverty Rate by Country). Low-wage employees often struggle to make ends meet because they lack benefits like paid sick time, a pension, or health insurance.

For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, the increase in the Gini coefficient has been steady and steady. It was 0.50 in 1820, 0.657 in 1980, and 0.65 in 1992 when first calculated the global Gini coefficient.

Also See: GDP per Capita by Country 2022

In the five years after severe epidemics like H1N1 (2009), Ebola (2014), and Zika (2015), the Gini coefficient rises by 1.5 points, according to the World Bank’s Poverty & Shared Prosperity 2020 report (2016).

Preliminary estimates show a 1.2-1.9 percent per year increase in the Gini coefficient between 2020 and 2021, indicating a rise in income inequality.