I’ve not yet seen the film “Slum Dog Millionaire,” but an article in the Washington Post sent me to google to see what the Gini indexes for income are for the US and India. The Gini index is a measure of the inequality in a society; it ranges from 0.00 to 1.00. An income Gini of 1.00 means that all the income is going to the top 1% of the country; a Gini near 0.00 means that income is evenly distributed. If you need to know more, you might search on Gini or on Lorenz Curve; the Gini index is a measure of the area under that curve, which is a graphic which shows for each cumulative percentage of a society’s population, what percentage of its income (or wealth) resides in that population. In a perfectly equal society, the Lorenz Curve would be a 45 degree line. (No such societies exist.) Many different shapes of Lorenz curve can have identical Gini coefficients.

Well, the wikipedia entry I got was this, and it shows some interesting data.

Here are the measures:

  • UN R/P 10%: Richest 10% to Poorest 10%
  • UN R/P 20%: Richest 20% to Poorest 20%
  • UN Gini
  • CIA R/P 10%
  • CIA Gini

Here’s the data for India:

  • UN R/P 10%: 8.6
  • UN R/P 20%: 5.6
  • UN Gini: 36.8
  • CIA R/P 8.6
  • CIA R/P 10% 36.8 in 2004

Here’s the data for the US:

  • UN R/P 10%: 15.9
  • UN R/P 20%: 8.4
  • UN Gini: 40.8
  • CIA R/P 15.0 in 2007
  • CIA Gini: 45 in 2007

In the US, the top 10% of income recipients got 15.9 times what the bottom 10% got; in India, the corresponding figure is 8.6 times.

What sort of society, dedicated to the proposition that we’re all created equal, could arrive, after 200+ years, at such a distribution of income? On the other hand, scanning the columns on the wikipedia table is an interesting exercise. Check out Sweden and Switzerland, Pakistan, Germany, Canada.

I look forward to seeing the film.

And I urge you to keep an eye out in April for a new film entitled “The End of Poverty?” which explores 3rd world poverty and its causes … and might lead you to reconsider how we go about ending poverty. It can be done … but not in the ways that the “common wisdom” might lead us to utilize.