This chapter reviews the empirical evidence on the levels and trends in income/consumption inequality and poverty in developing countries. It includes a discussion of data sources and measurement issues, evidence on the levels of inequality and poverty across countries and regions, an assessment...

Like the other chapters in this volume of the Handbook of Income Distribution (and its predecessor), the aim of this chapter is to provide a comprehensive review of a particular area of research. We examine the literature on post-1970 trends in poverty and income inequality, up to 2010 or 2011...

This chapter examines different approaches to the measurement of multidimensional inequality and poverty. It first outlines three aspects preliminary to any multidimensional study: the selection of the relevant dimensions, the indicators used to measure them, and the procedures for their...

To what extent can increasing inequality be explained by globalization? And if there is a connection, what if anything can and should be done about it? This chapter begins with an overview of how conventional trade theory has fared in predicting changes in inequality and how it has needed to be...

We examine the relationship between income and health with the purpose of establishing the extent to which the distribution of health in a population contributes to income inequality and is itself a product of that inequality. The evidence supports a substantial impact of ill-health on income,...

Studies of inequality often ignore resource allocation within the household. In doing so they miss an important element of the distribution of welfare that can vary dramatically depending on overall environmental and economic factors. Thus, measures of inequality that ignore intrahousehold...

This chapter offers an overview of the empirical and theoretical research on the long-run evolution of wealth and inheritance. Wealth–income ratios, inherited wealth, and wealth inequalities were high in the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries up until World War I, then sharply dropped during...

This chapter reviews the basic conceptual foundations for the measurement of polarization, the origins of those foundations, how polarization is distinct from inequality and other ways of considering distances and differences across individuals, and how polarization can be measured in an...