Its Gini index, a measure of income inequality, dropped from 0.63 to 0.52 from 1989 to 2009.
Among the BRIC nations, only Brazil is worse with a Gini index of around 0.57.
The Census Bureau publishes the Gini Index, which is the official measure of income inequality.
America's Gini coefficient has risen from 0.34 in the 1980s to 0.38 in the mid-2000s.
The Gini index ranges from 0, which represents perfect equality, to 1, for absolute inequality.
In most Latin American countries the Gini coefficient in 2010 was lower than in 2000.
Thus, the measure of inequality (Gini coefficient) fell from 0.518 in 2009 to 0.501 in 2011 in Brazil.
In the Gini measurement, zero means perfect equality and 1 means total inequality.
Most Americans had never heard of the Gini Coefficient until they read about it in Time magazine this past summer.
The Gini index value for the United States in 2011 was 0.475, higher than it was in 2010 at 0.469.
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Venezuela now has the lowest levels of economic inequality of any Latin American country as measured by the Gini coefficient.
In January, China's National Bureau of Statistics released an official Gini coefficient reading for the first time in ten years.
The Gini aggregates all disparities, so it is a better summary measure, but it does not tell you where the gaps are growing.
Gini coefficients and the top income share can paint different pictures.
The most common measure of inequality is the Gini coefficient.
To put this phenomenon in more precise terms: The Gini coefficient for income in the U.S., a number that quantifies a society's lack of economic equality, has been creeping up.
The Gini index, which measures inequality, has declined from 64 in 1989 to 56 in 2009 where an index of 0 means perfect equality (the US Gini index was 45 in in 2009).
The Gini index, which measures inequality between the social classes, went from a pre-tax level of 0.402 when Carter took the helm in January 1977, to a slightly worse 0.406, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
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While some experts maintain that number still underestimates the nation's inequality, it would make the division of income as unequal as in the U.S., which had a Gini coefficient of 0.48 in 2011, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
One thing they all have in common is that their income inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, is well below that of the US. In fact, the Scandinavian and German-speaking countries that consistently score well on a variety of business and quality-of-life surveys have some of the lowest inequality scores among developed nations.
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