NOV 23, 2014  

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You probably heard about the economic book Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, haven’t you? At least now, when it’s translated into English and taking the world by storm. The popularity of the book is actually the popularity of the subject: the outlook for global wealth inequality. I read just a few pages of the book but, as a fan of visual presentations, I’ve browsed through the most of the graphs. Below are two graphs which may provoke your interest into the subject.

Some critics state that Piketty’s argumentation is more ideologically than economically driven. Well, he is socially active besides his academic duties and interests. So, listen to him: "The consequences for the long-term dynamics of the wealth distribution are potentially terrifying, especially when one adds that the return on capital varies directly with the size of the initial stake and that the divergence in the wealth distribution is occurring on a global scale.

The top decile income share rose from less than 35 percent of total income in the 1970s to above almost 50 percent in 2000s-2010s.

The rise of the top decile income share since the 1970s is mostly due to the top percentile.