World Income Inequality Database (WIID)

The World Income Inequality Database (WIID) presents information on income inequality for developed, developing, and transition countries. It provides the most comprehensive set of income inequality statistics available and can be downloaded for free. ​

The latest version of the WIID, released 28 November 2023, covers 201 countries (including historical entities) through 2022, with over 24,000 data points in total. There are now nearly 4,000 unique country-year observations in the database.

As a part of the UNU-WIDER 2019-23 work programme on transforming economies, states, and societies, we have produced a more user-friendly companion database to the classic WIID, the WIID Companion, that will greatly simplify using the WIID for cross-country comparative analysis. The WIID Companion datasets are now directly accessible in real time through our WIID Explorer, a powerful tool for accessing and analysing the most comprehensive collection of comparable income inequality statistics in the world.

After 20 years of contributions to income inequality research, the WIID now includes a new expansion — the WIID Companion — to strengthen knowledge on income inequality. The companion provides an integrated series of net per capita income inequality data for each country, curated to best reflect the trends over the time and enable comparability across countries and over time, as well as new indicators of inequality — such as the Theil, the Atkinson, and the Palma index. It also contains the income shares for the entire national distribution and offers a complete global income distribution over time, estimated to the percentile level.

The World Income Inequality Database project is also working to publish and disseminate new research on income inequality, create opportunities to engage, and host events.

Watch this space

All papers, data and opinion pieces relating to this project, as well as opportunities to engage will be available on this webpage. 

UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

This project centrally addresses SDG 10 (reduce inequality within and among countries).

Context

Main subject

Theme: 2019-23, Transforming societies