The DOI matches its Crossref record; 4 of the 4 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Empirics of World Income Inequality
Abstract
This article employs a common general formula for inequality indexes to answer several basic questions about intercountry income inequality in recent decades: Has inequality across nations increased or declined (and why have earlier studies yielded mixed results)? Have different rates of population growth played a significant role in the trend? Have large nations dominated the trend? Are the results robust over different inequality measures and different income series? Two findings stand out. First, different rates of population growth in rich and poor nations played the predominant role in determining change in the distribution of per capita income across nations. Second, the centuries‐old trend of rising inequality leveled off from 1960 to 1989. The dependency theory thesis of a polarizing world system receives no support.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
A contribution to the theory of economic growth
Solow, R. M. (1956) · The Quarterly Journal of Economics · doi:10.2307/1884513 · Cited by 24,483
On the mechanics of economic development
Lucas, R. E. (1988) · Journal of Monetary Economics · doi:10.1016/0304-3932(88)90168-7 · Cited by 24,085
The Penn World Table (Mark 5): An Expanded Set of International Comparisons, 1950-1988
Summers, R., & Heston, A. (1991) · The Quarterly Journal of Economics · doi:10.2307/2937941 · Cited by 3,429
The Consumption of Dependency Theory in the United States
Cardoso, F. H. (1977) · Latin American Research Review · doi:10.1017/s0023879100030430 · Cited by 326
Cited by
Misery Loves Companies: Rethinking Social Initiatives by Business
Margolis, J. D., & Walsh, J. P. (2003) · Administrative Science Quarterly · doi:10.2307/3556659 · Cited by 5,130
Modernization, Cultural Change, and the Persistence of Traditional Values
Inglehart, R., & Baker, W. E. (2000) · American Sociological Review · doi:10.2307/2657288 · Cited by 4,524
2. Measures of Multigroup Segregation
Reardon, S. F., & Firebaugh, G. (2002) · Sociological Methodology · doi:10.1111/1467-9531.00110 · Cited by 891
Self-citationIs Globalization Reducing Poverty and Inequality?
Wade, R. H. (2004) · World Development · doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2003.10.007 · Cited by 649
Centeno, M. A., & Cohen, J. N. (2012) · Annual Review of Sociology · doi:10.1146/annurev-soc-081309-150235 · Cited by 286
Metadata
- Authors
- Firebaugh, G.
- Venue
- American Journal of Sociology
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Published
- 1999-05
- Volume
- 104
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 1597-1630
- ISSN
- 0002-9602 (ISSN-L)
- 1537-5390
- OpenAlex
- W2093464117
- Cited by
- 365
- References
- 4
- FWCI
- 55.54
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Empirics of World Income Inequality. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1086/210218
- The paper
- Firebaugh, G. (1999). Empirics of World Income Inequality. American Journal of Sociology. https://doi.org/10.1086/210218
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.