The tables presented on income per capita in
East Asia need some adjustment. The basic trend is
correct of course; by and large these countries have
been playing a very dramatic game of "catchup" with
the world's economic "leaders." But several oddities
stick out in that table.
Better than the per capita income table in the
World Development Reports are the table on per capita
income adjusted for PPP. Unfortunately there is not
a long time series for them although what there is is
consistent with the generalization of East Asian relative
gains, but the latest (1992) numbers show Japan still
behind the US. Japanese face very high housing and food
costs. It should be kept in mind that nearly 40% of
Japanese homes do not have indoor toilets. In many ways
it is still a "LDC."
On the other hand Hong Kong was number 5 in the
world (I guess this will not make many people on this
net very happy, but HK is a lot less laissez faire than
is commonly advertised). From Table 30 of the 1994
World Development Report (1987 and 1992 data) the top
countries down through Singapore, followed by some Asian
countries, are in percents of the US in PPP-adjusted
real per capita incomes:
1987 1992
US 100 100
Switzerland 95.9 95.6
Germany (West) 80.7 89.1
Japan 74.9 87.2
Hong Kong 74.4 86.7
Canada 91.0 85.3
France 77.8 83.0
Denmark 79.4 80.7
Austria 72.8 79.4
Belgium 71.7 78.5
Norway 80.1 78.0
Italy 71.6 76.7
Sweden 80.5 76.2
Netherlands 70.2 76.0
Australia 76.4 75.0
UK 73.1 72.4
Singapore 55.7 72.3
----------------
South Korea 28.8 38.7
Malaysia 26.6 34.8
Thailand 17.2 25.5
Indonesia 10.5 12.8
P.R. China 6.5 9.1
India 4.6 5.2
Obviously there are a lot of problems with these
numbers and alternative possible interpretations.
However in line with comments made by others I note that
in most (not all) of the East Asian "success stories"
(Taiwan data not available in World Dev. tables) are
notable for fairly equal income distributions, in many
cases arising from vigorous post-WW II land reforms but
at least in Japan reflecting much more egalitarian wage
scales than is found in, say, the US. It is also true
that in many of these countries, especially the PRC,
income is now becoming more unequally distributed. But
then that seems to be currently a worldwide phenomenon.
Is there any country out there whose income has
become MORE equally distributed in the last ten years?
Barkley Rosser
James Madison University
