Great Graphic: Global Gini

This Great Graphic is posted in numerous places, but I saw it on Miles Corak's blog Economics for Public Policy.  Alan Kruger, the Chairman of the Economic Advisors of the President helped popularize it in a speech last year.    

It charts the inequality (horizontal axis) against generational income mobility (vertical axis).   Denmark, for example in the lower right hand corner, is the most equal society with the most mobility.  Brazil, is among the most unequal societies with relatively weak mobility.     In a study that included a more countries, Corak actually found South Africa was the most unequal and the least mobile country. 

These two dimensions of (in)equality seem to go hand in hand. While few would find it surprising that the US is the least equal of the major industrialized countries, the relatively weaker inter-generational mobility runs counter to conventional wisdom.  The traditional  source of inter-generational mobility, higher education, is out of reach of an increasing number of Americans without taking on what appears to be debilitating debt.  The social, political and economic consequences of this simple chart of far reaching and arguably ranks up there with demographic shifts as fundamental challenges we face.