Thanks to JD for posting this; Jamie Galbraith's project does good work, particularly their critique of the World Bank's claims regarding rising equality under neo-liberalism and his desire to get away from Gini coefficients (Jamie favors a Theil statistic). (Pen-l's own recent discussion of measurement in the context of PPP is also relevant.)
But people shouldn't feel that there is no other space left for their own research :-) Galbraith's project *mostly* focuses on inequality in "pay" or salary. The data it uses (like the US Census Bureau) exclude profit income (income from stocks, bonds, capital gains, etc). This is usually true even when the studies misleadingly refer to "income inequality" - profit income is excluded. Likewise, perhaps by necessity, the project doesn't include work on wealth inequality (and so also misses some key recent changes like pensions, assets, etc).
As a result, a lot of what JKG often captures is the rising inequality *within* the "working class", very broadly defined. This sort of rising inequality has often been a serious factor in the early stages of a neo-liberal opening (leading to a fragmented political response) such as the US in the 1980's, but it is less a factor as the changes proceed (eg the US in the '90s). In the "mature" phases of a neo-liberal process, the big changes, seem to be between salary income and profit income (or asset wealth). These changes really dominate the numbers as neo-liberalism proceeds and are left out in many studies (to be fair to JKG, these changes between classes are very hard to capture cleanly). And of course, some would argue, it is precisely this rising inequality between wages and profits that has driven the neo-liberal process to begin with. So, leaving it out, leaves out a lot. There is a lot left to be done.
[I hope to catch Jamie on this, perhaps at upcoming conferences and hear his perspective. Since I imagine he is not on the list, let me point out that it is hard to find and work with the more complete data - governments have not exactly made this sort of data a priority.]
Paul
Jim D. writes:
This web site may be of interest. -----Original Message----- From: James K. Galbraith [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Dear Friends, The web-site of the University of Texas Inequality Project (UTIP) has an entirely new look, with a much-streamlined approach to the presentation of our twenty-eight working papers, six data sets, and measurement tools. The site also now features a "tutorials" section, with introductory and advanced guides to inequality measures and especially to the Theil statistic............
