inequality is widening and that within-country inequality is getting worse as well, it would have to follow that global inequality measured across all the world's individuals is rising too, would it not? Actually no. Even if those first two assumptions were true global inequality measured across all the world's individuals might well be falling How so? Simply add a third assumption: namely that a group of poor countries accounting for a big share of all the poor people in the world was growing very rapidly. Suppose, for instance. that average incomes in India and China were growing much faster than average incomes in the rich industrial economies. Then it could be true that inequality was widening within every country, including within China and India themselves and also that the gap between the very poorest countries(of sub-Saharan Africa) and the richest(Europe and the United States)was widening; and yet at the same time that inequality measured across all the individuals in the world was falling fast because average incomes in the two most populous poor countries were rapidly going up knowing anything else, one should therefore be sceptical about all the claims that are so ithout It so happens that average incomes in India and China are going up extremely rapidly. wi confidently made about rising "global inequality Poor visibilit Attentive readers of The Economist will remember seeing before the panel of charts shown below.(They first appeared in a presentation given at the beginning of 2003 by Stanley Fischer, former deputy chief of the International Monetary Fund, to the American Economic Association We wrote about them in this article of August 23rd last year. ) We make no apologies for showing them to readers again: at a stroke, they cut through much of the statistical fog surrounding this subject. In both charts, the horizontal axis shows the average level of gDP per head in 1980, and the vertical axis shows the rate of growth in inflation-adjusted gDP per head between 1980 and 2000. For the moment, concentrate on chart 1, which shows each country as a single point.inequality is widening, and that within-country inequality is getting worse as well, it would have to follow that global inequality, measured across all the world's individuals, is rising too, would it not? Actually, no. Even if those first two assumptions were true, global inequality measured across all the world's individuals might well be falling. How so? Simply add a third assumption: namely, that a group of poor countries accounting for a big share of all the poor people in the world was growing very rapidly. Suppose, for instance, that average incomes in India and China were growing much faster than average incomes in the rich industrial economies. Then it could be true that inequality was widening within every country, including within China and India themselves; and also that the gap between the very poorest countries (of sub-Saharan Africa) and the richest (Europe and the United States) was widening; and yet, at the same time, that inequality measured across all the individuals in the world was falling fast, because average incomes in the two most populous poor countries were rapidly going up. It so happens that average incomes in India and China are going up extremely rapidly. Without knowing anything else, one should therefore be sceptical about all the claims that are so confidently made about rising “global inequality”. Poor visibility Attentive readers of The Economist will remember seeing before the panel of charts shown below. (They first appeared in a presentation given at the beginning of 2003 by Stanley Fischer, former deputy chief of the International Monetary Fund, to the American Economic Association. We wrote about them in this article of August 23rd last year.) We make no apologies for showing them to readers again: at a stroke, they cut through much of the statistical fog surrounding this subject. In both charts, the horizontal axis shows the average level of GDP per head in 1980, and the vertical axis shows the rate of growth in inflation-adjusted GDP per head between 1980 and 2000. For the moment, concentrate on chart 1, which shows each country as a single point