Countries With the Highest Income Inequality: How the Data Should Be Read

Income inequality is often reduced to a table of Gini coefficients. A country is given a number, placed above or below another country, and the result is presented as a complete description of living standards. The number is useful, but only if its definition, reference year and distributional basis remain visible.

The OECD defines income inequality as the difference in how income is distributed across a population. Its standard indicator uses household disposable income: earnings, self-employment and capital income plus public cash transfers, minus income taxes and social-security contributions. The Gini coefficient ranges from 0, where every person receives the same income, to 1, where all income goes to one person.1

The World Bank’s Gini indicator is based on primary household-survey data from government statistical agencies and World Bank country departments; for high-income economies, much of the data comes from the Luxembourg Income Study database.2 The World Bank observations are not all from the same year, and survey methods differ. A ranking that ignores those facts can create false precision.

This article therefore does not claim that one undated list identifies the “most unequal countries” for every purpose. Instead, it explains what the main datasets measure, identifies the high-inequality patterns supported by comparable OECD data, and separates income inequality, wealth inequality, poverty, inequality of opportunity and human-development inequality.

Data note: A Gini coefficient from disposable income after taxes and transfers is not interchangeable with a Gini calculated from market income before redistribution. Country observations also have different reference years. Any serious comparison must name the income concept and year.

The short answer

In the OECD’s Society at a Glance 2024 comparison, the 2021 disposable-income Gini ranged from around 0.22 in the Slovak Republic to more than twice that value in Chile and Costa Rica. The report states that income inequality was highest among Latin American countries, Türkiye and the United States in the OECD comparison, while Nordic and some Central European countries had the lowest levels.3

Those findings are not a universal 2026 global ranking. The OECD figure uses disposable equivalised household income and the latest available data year differs for some countries. The report’s figure notes identify 2021 as the reference year for most countries but earlier years for Australia, Germany, Israel, Mexico, Switzerland, Türkiye, Denmark, Japan, Iceland and South Africa.3

The World Bank Gini series is broader in country coverage but also contains different survey years and methods.2 For global comparisons, the Poverty and Inequality Platform is useful when the researcher checks the observation year, welfare concept, purchasing-power basis and survey quality rather than copying a single sorted column.

Question	Appropriate measure	What it can show	What it cannot show by itself
How unequal is disposable income?	After-tax, after-transfer equivalised-income Gini	Distribution of resources available to households.	Wealth, public services or absolute poverty.
How unequal is market income?	Pre-tax, pre-transfer income distribution	Labour and capital-market inequality before redistribution.	What households can actually spend after taxes and transfers.
Who receives the most?	Top 10%, top 1% or S90/S10 share	Concentration at the top and gap between deciles.	The full distribution below the selected groups.
Who lacks resources?	Poverty rate or poverty gap	Absolute or relative deprivation under a defined line.	Whether the rest of the distribution is equal.
How unequal is wealth?	Net wealth distribution	Assets minus liabilities across households.	Annual income or liquidity.
How unequal are outcomes beyond money?	UNDP IHDI	Inequality-adjusted health, education and income dimensions.	A substitute for the income Gini.

What is the Gini coefficient?

The Gini coefficient summarises the distribution of income or another variable. It is derived from the relationship between cumulative population shares and cumulative income shares, commonly represented through the Lorenz curve. A value of 0 means complete equality under the chosen definition; a value of 1 means complete inequality.1 3

The coefficient is attractive because it compresses a complicated distribution into one number. It is also limited for the same reason. Two countries can have the same Gini while having very different patterns: one may have a large middle class and a small gap at the top; another may have a large gap between the bottom and middle but less concentration at the very top.

The Gini is therefore best used with additional indicators such as the share received by the richest 10%, the share received by the poorest 10%, the S90/S10 ratio, poverty rates and median income. The OECD’s 2024 report states that the average income of the richest 10% was 8.4 times the average income of the poorest 10% across OECD countries in 2021. It reports a range from 5 to 1 in the Slovak Republic and Slovenia to more than 20 to 1 in Chile and Costa Rica.3

Gini interpretation	Correct wording
0.22 versus 0.44	The second distribution is substantially more unequal under the same comparable definition.
0.40 in one year versus 0.39 in another	A small difference may not be meaningful without survey uncertainty and methodology.
Same Gini, different decile shares	Countries can have different distribution shapes despite the same summary index.
High Gini with falling poverty	Inequality can remain high while lower-income households improve in absolute terms.
Low Gini with low median income	Equality does not guarantee prosperity.

A Gini coefficient is not a moral score and does not identify the policy that produced it. It is a descriptive statistic. Interpretation requires information about labour markets, taxes, transfers, household composition, prices, public services, wealth and social mobility.

Disposable income versus market income

The income concept changes the ranking. Market income includes earnings and capital income before taxes and transfers. Disposable income subtracts taxes and social contributions and adds public cash transfers. A country can have high market-income inequality but lower disposable-income inequality if its tax and transfer system redistributes substantially.

The OECD’s standard Gini indicator uses household disposable income after taxes and social cash transfers, adjusted for household size through an equivalence scale.3 That is often a useful measure of resources available to households, but it does not capture every public service. Healthcare, education, housing support in kind and transport subsidies may not appear as cash income even though they influence living standards.

The difference between market and disposable income can be framed as a redistribution effect. If the market-income Gini is much higher than the disposable-income Gini, taxes and transfers are compressing the measured distribution. That does not prove that the system is efficient or fair. It may reflect high taxes, targeted benefits, pension structures, labour-market institutions or demographic differences.

Income concept	Includes	Excludes or may not capture
Market income	Wages, self-employment and capital income before government redistribution	Taxes, social contributions and public cash transfers.
Disposable income	Market income plus public cash transfers minus direct taxes and contributions	Many in-kind public services and unpaid household production.
Equivalised disposable income	Disposable income adjusted for household size and composition	Some differences in needs, housing location and disability costs.
Consumption resources	Goods and services households can actually use	The distribution of future income and wealth.

A ranking that mixes pre-tax Gini values for one country with after-tax values for another is not meaningful. The same warning applies to surveys using different welfare concepts or reporting income per person without equivalising household size.

Which countries appear at the high end of OECD inequality data?

The OECD’s Society at a Glance 2024 reports that disposable-income inequality in 2021 was highest among Latin American OECD countries, Türkiye and the United States in the comparison. It identifies the Nordic and some Central European countries as having the lowest inequality levels.3

The report describes the Gini as around 0.22 in the Slovak Republic and more than twice that value in Chile and Costa Rica. It also says that income inequality among partner economies ranged from 0.29 in Croatia to 0.32 in Bulgaria and 0.38 in Romania, while South Africa’s Gini stood at 0.62 in 2017.3

These values must be read with their reference years. Chile and Costa Rica were shown with 2022 observations in the report’s figure notes, while South Africa’s observation was from 2017. The numbers are not a synchronized global snapshot. They are evidence from the latest comparable observations available to the OECD at the time of publication.

The United States is an important high-income case. Its disposable-income inequality is higher than in many peer OECD economies, but its Gini should not be interpreted as evidence that every American household is poor or that the country has the world’s highest wealth inequality under every definition. The distribution of market income, taxes, healthcare costs, household size, housing and wealth all matter.

Nordic countries are often used as examples of lower disposable-income inequality, but the outcome reflects institutions rather than geography alone. Progressive taxation, social insurance, collective bargaining, public services, employment patterns and household composition can all influence the after-tax distribution. A country can have low disposable-income inequality and still face housing, wealth or opportunity gaps.

Latin America and the persistence of high inequality

The OECD data identify Latin American OECD countries as high-inequality cases in the disposable-income comparison.3 The region’s history includes unequal land ownership, segmented labour markets, informality, differences in education access, commodity cycles, tax capacity and uneven access to social protection. Those factors can persist even when poverty falls.

It is important not to treat the region as homogeneous. Countries have different income concepts, survey coverage, fiscal systems, transfer programmes and labour-market institutions. Within-country differences between urban and rural areas, formal and informal workers, regions and racial or ethnic groups may be larger than a single national average suggests.

A high Gini may fall during a commodity boom, a transfer expansion or an employment recovery, but the result can reverse if inflation, unemployment or fiscal stress erodes lower-income purchasing power. A low Gini in a particular survey year does not prove that structural inequality has been solved.

The correct analytical approach is to examine the bottom 40%, median income, poverty, top shares, labour-force participation and access to public services alongside the Gini. Income distribution is an outcome of institutions and markets, not a fixed national character.

South Africa and the difference between income, wealth and opportunity

The OECD’s 2024 report lists a South African disposable-income Gini of 0.62 for 2017, one of the highest values in its comparison.3 Because the reference year is older than the main OECD 2021 group, the figure should be cited as a 2017 observation rather than a current 2026 estimate.

South Africa also illustrates why a high income Gini cannot explain an entire society. Historical exclusion, unequal access to land and education, unemployment, spatial segregation and differences in household resources all affect opportunity. A household may have low current income but own a valuable asset; another may have higher income but no wealth, insecure employment or expensive housing.

The distinction matters for policy. Income transfers may reduce annual inequality without changing ownership of land or financial assets. Education can improve future earnings but not immediately change the income distribution. Labour-market reform can affect wages, but the result depends on employment creation and productivity. There is no single lever that maps directly from a Gini coefficient to a social outcome.

Wealth inequality is usually higher than income inequality

Income is a flow measured over a period, often a year. Wealth is a stock measured at a point in time: assets minus liabilities. A household can have low annual income and substantial housing wealth, or high income and limited net assets. Wealth also compounds across generations through ownership of homes, businesses, financial assets and land.

The OECD’s Society at a Glance 2024 reports that the top 10% of households owned more than half—52% on average—of total household wealth in the countries reviewed, with the share reaching 79% in the United States in the cited wealth data.3 The report notes that wealth is more unequally distributed than income in all countries reviewed, but countries with lower income inequality are not necessarily those with low wealth concentration.

Wealth statistics are more difficult to compare because coverage of the very richest households, pension systems, owner-occupied housing, business assets and offshore wealth differs between surveys. The OECD notes that differences in social-security and occupational-pension arrangements can also affect the definition of net private household wealth.3

Difference	Income inequality	Wealth inequality
Time dimension	Flow during a period	Stock at a point in time
Main sources	Wages, self-employment, capital income and transfers	Housing, land, businesses, financial assets minus liabilities
Typical distribution	Less concentrated than wealth	More concentrated, partly because assets compound
Main vulnerability	Loss of earnings or transfers	Illiquidity, asset-price falls or debt exposure
Intergenerational channel	Education and labour-market access	Inheritance, gifts and family property

A country can therefore have a moderate disposable-income Gini but high wealth concentration. That is not a contradiction; it is a different distributional question.

Poverty is not the same as inequality

Poverty measures whether people fall below a defined absolute or relative threshold. Inequality measures how resources are distributed across the population. A country can reduce poverty while remaining highly unequal if the income of the poorest rises but the richest gain even more. A country can have low income inequality while the whole population has low living standards.

The World Bank Poverty and Inequality Platform provides poverty and inequality measures based on household surveys, with welfare concepts and purchasing-power adjustments documented in its methodology.2 Poverty lines are not the same as the median-relative threshold used by many high-income economies. A comparison must name the line, price basis and reference year.

The poverty gap adds another layer: it measures how far poor households are, on average, below the poverty line. Two countries can have the same poverty rate but different poverty gaps. A Gini coefficient cannot distinguish those cases without additional indicators.

Absolute and relative poverty also answer different policy questions. An absolute line asks whether a household can reach a defined standard based on purchasing power. A relative line asks how far a household is from the income distribution of its society. Both can be useful; neither replaces the other.

Human-development inequality and the UNDP IHDI

Income does not capture every dimension of well-being. The United Nations Development Programme’s Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI) adjusts the Human Development Index for inequality in the distribution of health, education and income dimensions.4

UNDP explains that the IHDI is computed as a geometric mean of inequality-adjusted dimensional indices. It equals the HDI when there is no inequality across people and falls below the HDI as inequality rises.4

The IHDI is not an alternative Gini ranking. A country can have a similar income Gini to another country but different inequality in schooling, life expectancy or health access. The index is useful when the question is human development after distributional losses, not only the distribution of disposable income.

The IHDI also has limits. It is a composite measure, relies on data for several dimensions, and can be affected by the choice of indicators and reference years. It should be presented alongside, not instead of, income, wealth and poverty statistics.

Why redistribution changes the result

Taxes and transfers alter disposable income. Social cash transfers can support low-income households, pensions can change the distribution among older people, and tax structures can reduce or increase post-tax inequality. But redistribution also changes incentives, public revenue and the composition of household resources.

The OECD’s income-inequality indicator explicitly deducts taxes and social-security contributions and includes public cash transfers.1 3 Comparing market-income and disposable-income Gini values can show how much measured inequality is compressed by the fiscal system, but it does not reveal the entire welfare effect. A public healthcare service can improve living standards without being counted as a cash transfer; a high housing cost can reduce disposable purchasing power after the Gini is calculated.

Redistribution also has a time dimension. A cash transfer can reduce current inequality, while education, health and childcare policies can affect future income and opportunity. Pension systems may compress elderly income while placing costs on working-age households. Fiscal incidence analysis is required to understand who pays and who benefits.

Labour markets, wages and capital income

Income inequality is strongly connected to the labour market. Employment rates, hours, wage dispersion, union coverage, minimum wages, informality, unemployment insurance and access to training influence the distribution of earnings. Capital income and business ownership can widen the distribution at the top even when wage inequality is stable.

A country with high employment can still have high income inequality if wages are widely dispersed. A country with low wage dispersion can still have low household incomes if employment is weak. Household composition matters as well: a two-earner household and a single-earner household may have different resources even when individual wages are similar.

Capital income is difficult to measure in household surveys, especially for the richest households. Dividends, retained business earnings, rents, capital gains and offshore assets may be underreported or treated differently across countries. That is one reason income surveys and tax-record studies can produce different estimates at the top.

The OECD’s wealth and income data should therefore be read as statistical measurements with coverage and definition limits, not as a complete census of all hidden assets.3

Why historical Gini rankings can mislead

Income distributions change over time, but data availability changes as well. A country’s latest World Bank observation may be from a different year than its neighbour’s. A survey may change its questionnaire, sampling, income definition, equivalence scale or treatment of taxes. A crisis can temporarily change employment and transfers, while inflation can alter real purchasing power between survey rounds.

The OECD’s figure notes are explicit about different observation years: most countries in the 2021 comparison use 2021, while several countries use 2020, 2019, 2018 or 2017 observations.3 The World Bank page labels each country with its most recent year rather than pretending that all countries share one synchronized observation.2

A ranking should therefore include the year next to every figure or group countries by comparable year. If the data are old, say so. If a country is absent, do not infer that it is unusually equal or unequal. Missingness is a data-availability problem, not a distributional result.

How to compare countries responsibly

The first step is to choose the welfare concept. If the aim is to compare resources after government redistribution, use equivalised disposable income. If the aim is to examine market earnings, use pre-tax and pre-transfer income. If the aim is to understand asset concentration, use net wealth. If the aim is to compare living standards across dimensions, include IHDI or other multidimensional measures.

The second step is to anchor the reference year. Do not compare a 2017 observation with a 2022 observation without showing the date. The third step is to use more than one indicator: Gini, S90/S10, bottom-40% share, poverty rate, median income and wealth share. The fourth step is to explain uncertainty and survey comparability.

Step	Question	Recommended practice
1. Concept	Income, wealth, poverty or opportunity?	Name the construct before selecting the indicator.
2. Welfare basis	Market or disposable income?	Keep pre-tax and after-tax measures separate.
3. Unit	Person, household or equivalised household?	Preserve the source denominator.
4. Year	Are observations synchronized?	Show the year beside every comparison.
5. Distribution	Is the pattern concentrated at the top or bottom?	Add decile shares and poverty measures.
6. Public services	Are in-kind benefits important?	Explain what cash-based measures omit.
7. Data quality	Are surveys comparable?	Use source methodology and flag older or missing data.

The final conclusion should be modest. A Gini can show that one distribution is more unequal than another under a defined method. It cannot, by itself, explain causes, predict social unrest, forecast growth or recommend a tax policy.

Common mistakes in inequality rankings

The first mistake is presenting an undated Gini table as a current global ranking. The second is mixing disposable-income and market-income measures. The third is treating a Gini of 0.40 as if it were a share of income. The fourth is switching between a 0–1 and 0–100 scale without saying so.

The fifth is confusing income with wealth. The sixth is treating poverty as an inequality measure. The seventh is using national averages to describe every ethnic group, region, age group or household. The eighth is interpreting a small cross-country difference as meaningful when survey uncertainty and reference years differ.

The ninth is assuming that a low Gini means a country is rich. The tenth is assuming that a high Gini means poverty is rising. The eleventh is ignoring taxes, transfers and public services. The twelfth is copying a secondary list without checking the primary household-survey source.

The thirteenth is treating correlation as causation. Inequality may correlate with health, mobility, crime or political outcomes, but the relationship can reflect institutions, history, demographics and omitted variables. A careful article uses the data to describe patterns and cites research for causal claims.

Frequently asked questions

Which countries have the highest income inequality?

The answer depends on the dataset and income definition. In the OECD’s 2021 disposable-income comparison, inequality was highest among Latin American OECD countries, Türkiye and the United States; the OECD also reported a South African Gini of 0.62 for 2017.3 The figures have different reference years and should not be treated as a synchronized 2026 world ranking.

What is a good Gini coefficient?

There is no universal “good” threshold. A lower Gini means a more equal distribution under the selected definition, but equality does not guarantee high incomes or low poverty. The policy question is whether the distribution is compatible with acceptable living standards, opportunity and social goals.

Is a Gini of 0.5 the same as 50% inequality?

No. The Gini coefficient ranges from 0 to 1, or can be expressed from 0 to 100. A value of 0.5 is not a statement that 50% of income is unequal or that a particular group receives 50% of income. It is a summary of the area between the Lorenz curve and the equality line.1

Is wealth inequality higher than income inequality?

Usually, wealth is more concentrated than annual income because assets compound and ownership is uneven. The OECD’s 2024 report found that the top 10% owned more than half of household wealth on average in the reviewed countries, while the top 10% received close to one-quarter of income on average.3

Is poverty the same as income inequality?

No. Poverty compares resources with a defined line; inequality compares the distribution across the population. Poverty can fall while inequality remains high, and a low Gini can coexist with low average income.

Do taxes reduce income inequality?

Taxes and cash transfers can reduce measured disposable-income inequality relative to market income, but the effect depends on policy design and the measure used. The OECD disposable-income Gini explicitly includes cash transfers and deducts income taxes and social-security contributions.1

Why do countries have different Gini reference years?

Household surveys are collected and processed on different schedules. Some countries have newer data than others, and methodological changes can affect comparability. The OECD and World Bank both publish the observation year so users can see the timing.2 3

What is the inequality-adjusted HDI?

UNDP’s IHDI adjusts HDI for inequality in health, education and income dimensions. It equals HDI when there is no inequality and falls below HDI as inequality rises.4 It complements rather than replaces the income Gini.

Can a country be unequal but prosperous?

Yes. A country may have high average income and high inequality, or low inequality and low average income. Median income, poverty, public services, wealth and opportunities should be assessed alongside the distribution.

Is income inequality an investment signal?

Not by itself. A Gini coefficient is a social and economic distribution statistic, not a forecast of asset returns or a personalised financial indicator. Investors would need a separate analysis of growth, policy, valuations, risk and the relevant time horizon.

Conclusion

The countries that appear at the high end of inequality comparisons depend on what is being measured. OECD disposable-income data identify Latin American OECD countries, Türkiye and the United States as high-inequality cases in the cited comparison, while the Slovak Republic and other Nordic or Central European countries appear at the lower end. South Africa’s cited OECD observation is very high but refers to 2017, not a synchronized current year.3

The most important lesson is methodological. Income inequality is not wealth inequality. Poverty is not the same as inequality. Market income is not disposable income. A Gini from one year cannot automatically be compared with a Gini from another, and a national average cannot describe every household.

A reliable country comparison reports the income concept, equivalence scale, survey year, source and missing-data limitations. It uses Gini alongside decile shares, poverty, median income, wealth concentration and human-development measures. That approach produces a more accurate answer than a dramatic but unsupported global ranking.

This is research and analysis only, not personalized financial advice.

Related Reading

• Countries With the Highest Household Debt
• Countries With the Highest Cost of Living
• Countries With the Highest Homeownership Rates
• Countries With the Largest Economies by GDP
• Countries With the Best Work-Life Balance

References