ABSTRACT
In early 2017, The Times columnist Philip Collins wrote: "We are living through a long arc of progress." He meant by this that democracy was thriving, with more than 4 billion people living under a democratic government; that is, one that can be removed from power through open and fair elections. There are, of course, poor and rich families in every country, no matter how economically developed it is. Because of this, it is necessary when thinking about inequality to consider differences in wealth and income within countries, as well as between them. In terms of the absolute levels of inequality across the European Union, the Nordic countries have the lowest and the UK and Italy the highest, with others in between. Francois Bourguignon says that income inequality has also risen within a number of developing countries for which there are long-term data.
