Global Inequality and Within Country Inequality: Living Standards and Life Duration

This paper analyzes the evolution of the global inequality of living standards and raises the question of whether the fall in inequality observed in the last two or three decades, largely because of the fall in the inequality between countries, could stop or reverse in the future due to the opposite evolution of the within country inequality. This dualist evolution of the global inequality of standards of living is compared to that of the inequality of health, as approximated by life duration. There too, global inequality is falling but this is due mostly to the within country inequality, whereas between country inequality plays a negligible role.