For Americans, a report saying inequality has dramatically fallen seems absurd. In the West, the gap between the rich and poor has been widening, and the middle class is gradually vanishing. But on a global scale, economic equality has improved to the highest level since the late 19th century, according to new research by one of the world’s foremost experts on the topic. “It’s very good news,” he told Fortune.
“Inequality in individual countries has been generally, in the last 30 years, up,” economist Branko Milanović said in an interview with Fortune about his findings. “But global inequality at the same time has been going down. So these two things are not contradictory. Simply, global inequality depends on rates of growth of different countries.”
