Mapping Inequality Around the World

Explorable Inequality from the Carnegie Mellon University is a great mapped time-line visualization of wealth inequality gleaned from the tax data of 29 countries over one hundred years.

The map explores how inequality has changed throughout the world over the last century, looking at how the wealth of the richest 1% and 10% in each country has evolved compared to the rest of the population. The map includes an animated time-line which you can play to view how income inequality has changed in any combination of countries over the last 100 years.

You can also select any combination of the countries on the map to view a graph of the income inequality of each country over the 100 years.

One of the most glaring observations that this mapped visualization provides is how income inequality in the US has dramatically risen since the 1980's. If you select France and the US on the map you can see how the income inequality in both countries was broadly similar in the decades following the second world war. However since the 1980's while income inequality in France has stayed broadly the same in the US income inequality has soared.