MEASURING INTER-NATIONAL DIFFERENCES IN INCOME - A DISTRIBUTIONAL APPROACH

Statistics of per capita Gross Domestic Product for 178 countries for each of the years between 1970 and 1989 are analysed in order to measu re inter-national inequalities and to assess the success of aid from t he world's richer economies in reducing them. Conventional statistics of inequality, whether based on moments or on quantiles, show unsatisf actory irregularities. However, two statistical distributions are foun d which describe the data closely and enable convenient and relatively stable measures of inequality to be obtained. The results show that s o far from decreasing, these measures of inter-national inequality app roximately trebled during the period 1970-89.