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01 / 05
Surprisingly, the World Is Becoming More Equal

Blog Post | Health & Medical Care

Surprisingly, the World Is Becoming More Equal

Chelsea Follett and Vincent Geloso measure the global decline in income inequality in their comprehensive new paper.

Summary: Contrary to popular belief, global inequality is shrinking across many dimensions of human well-being, including income, lifespan, nutrition, education, internet access, and political liberty. This article presents a new Inequality of Human Progress Index that measures and confirms this trend, arguing that greater global interconnectedness and market liberalization have contributed to increases in equality across the globe.


Read Chelsea Follett and Vincent Geloso’s full paper, “Global Inequality in Well‐​Being Has Decreased across Many Dimensions,” here.

Reading the news or listening to politicians and pundits speak, one could easily get the impression that global inequality is getting worse. But is the widely held belief that the world is becoming less equal true, or is it mistaken? The overwhelming majority of long‐​term trends regarding living standards—ranging from rising life expectancy to declining rates of poverty and hunger—show considerable improvement, even accounting for recent pandemic‐​related setbacks. You can explore the evidence for yourself on websites such as Human​Progress​.org. Have those improvements been widely shared, or have they accumulated mainly to a small population while much of the world is left behind?

That’s what George Mason University economist Vincent Geloso and I set out to discover. What we found is that while global inequality unquestionably still exists, it is in fact shrinking.

Our Inequality of Human Progress Index offers a new way of measuring global inequality. It is more comprehensive than any prior international inequality index, taking into account a greater number of dimensions. We found that in addition to a global decline in income inequality, there have also been declines in lifespan inequality, nutritional inequality, educational inequality, internet access inequality, and political liberty inequality. Around the world, gaps in these areas are shrinking.

Most importantly, there has been a decline in overall global inequality. That result was consistent, even under a variety of specifications that we tested. The data show that across all but two of the areas we examined, the world has become more equal since 1990. The data does not support the narrative of rising worldwide inequality.

The exceptions were infant survival inequality and clean air inequality. While infant mortality has decreased everywhere, it has fallen faster in rich countries with advanced medical technology and neonatal intensive care units. Clean air inequality has also gone up, probably because economic development often results in more pollution during industrialization before falling as a nation attains postindustrial prosperity—a tendency economists call the “environmental Kuznets curve.” Much of the world is still undergoing this transition.

Our research shows that improvements in international development have been both greater and more dispersed than many people realize. While there are still gaps, they are shrinking, and an accurate assessment of current trends is critical as we try to deepen our understanding of the drivers of human progress. The greater global interconnectedness and market liberalization of the past few decades have, it seems, not only raised absolute living standards but also equality. The world is not only better off than is commonly appreciated but also more equal.

This article was originally published at Cato.org. Read Chelsea Follett and Vincent Geloso’s full paper here.

International Labour Organization | Income Inequality

Wage Inequality Declined in Most Countries Since Start of 21st Century

“The Global Wage Report 2024-25 finds that since the early 2000’s, on average, wage inequality, which compares the wages of high and low wage earners, decreased in many countries at an average rate that ranged from 0.5 to 1.7 per cent annually, depending on the measure used. The most significant decreases occurred among low-income countries where the average annual decrease ranged from 3.2 to 9.6 per cent in the past two decades. 

Wage inequality is declining at a slower pace in wealthier countries, shrinking annually between 0.3 and 1.3 per cent in upper-middle-income-countries, and between 0.3 to 0.7 per cent in high-income countries”

From International Labour Organization.

World Bank | Income & Inequality

Remittances to Poor Countries Reached $685 Billion in 2024

“Officially recorded remittances to low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are expected to reach $685 billion in 2024. The true size of remittances, including flows through informal channels, is also believed to be even larger. The growth rate of remittances in 2024 is estimated to be 5.8 percent, significantly higher than 1.2 percent registered in 2023…

It is notable that remittances have continued to outpace other types of external financial flows to low- and middle-income countries. Remittances have even surpassed FDI significantly (figure 5). The gap between remittances and FDI is expected to widen further in 2024.”

From World Bank.

Blog Post | Food Prices

Thanksgiving Dinner Will Be 8.8 Percent Cheaper This Year

Be thankful for the increase in human knowledge that transforms atoms into valuable resources.

Summary: There has been a remarkable decrease in the “time price” of a Thanksgiving dinner over the past 38 years, despite nominal cost increases. Thanks to rising wages and innovation, the time required for a blue-collar worker to afford the meal dropped significantly, making food much more abundant. Population growth and human knowledge drive resource abundance, allowing for greater prosperity and efficiency in providing for more people.


Since 1986, the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) has conducted an annual price survey of food items that make up in a typical Thanksgiving Day dinner. The items on this shopping list are intended to feed a group of 10 people, with plenty of leftovers remaining. The list includes a turkey, a pumpkin pie mix, milk, a vegetable tray, bread rolls, pie shells, green peas, fresh cranberries, whipping cream, cubed stuffing, sweet potatoes, and several miscellaneous ingredients.

So, what has happened to the price of a Thanksgiving Day dinner over the past 38 years? The AFBF reports that in nominal terms, the cost rose from $28.74 in 1986 to $58.08 in 2024. That’s an increase of 102.1 percent.

Since we buy things with money but pay for them with time, we should analyze the cost of a Thanksgiving Day dinner using time prices. To calculate the time price, we divide the nominal price of the meal by the nominal wage rate. That gives us the number of work hours required to earn enough money to feed those 10 guests.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the blue-collar hourly wage rate increased by 240.2 percent – from $8.96 per hour in October 1986 to $30.48 in October 2024.

Remember that when wages increase faster than prices, time prices decrease. Consequently, we can say that between 1986 and 2024 the time price of the Thanksgiving dinner for a blue-collar worker declined from 3.2 hours to 1.9 hours, or 40.6 percent.

That means that blue-collar workers can buy 1.68 Thanksgiving Day dinners in 2024 for the same number of hours it took to buy one dinner in 1986. We can also say that Thanksgiving dinner became 68 percent more abundant.

Here is a chart showing the time price trend for the Thanksgiving dinner over the past 38 years:

The figure shows that the time price of a Thanksgiving dinner for a blue collar worker has gone down since 1986.
The figure shows that the time price of a Thanksgiving meal has decreased, while population, the nominal price of the meal, and hourly earnings have all increased.

The lowest time price for the Thanksgiving dinner was 1.87 hours in 2020, but then COVID-19 policies struck, and the time price jumped to 2.29 hours in 2022.

In 2023, the time price of the Thanksgiving dinner came to 2.09 hours. This year, it came to 1.91 hours – a decline of 8.8 percent. For the time it took to buy Thanksgiving dinner last year, we get 9.6 percent more food this year.

Between 1986 and 2024, the US population rose from 240 million to 337 million – a 40.4 percent increase. Over the same period, the Thanksgiving dinner time price decreased by 40.6 percent. Each one percentage point increase in population corresponded to a one percentage point decrease in the time price.

To get a sense of the relationship between food prices and population growth, imagine providing a Thanksgiving Day dinner for everyone in the United States. If the whole of the United States had consisted of blue-collar workers in 1986, the total Thanksgiving dinner time price would have been 77 million hours. By 2024, the time price fell to 64.2 million hours – a decline of 12.8 million hours or 16.6 percent.

Given that the population of the United States increased by 40.4 percent between 1986 and 2024, we can confidently say that more people truly make resources much more abundant.

An earlier version of this article was published at Gale Winds on 11/21/2024.