In most Latin American countries the Gini coefficient in 2010 was lower than in 2000.

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Most Americans had never heard of the Gini Coefficient until they read about it in Time magazine this past summer.

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Venezuela now has the lowest levels of economic inequality of any Latin American country as measured by the Gini coefficient.

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The most common measure of inequality is the Gini coefficient.

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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.

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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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Thus, the measure of inequality (Gini coefficient) fell from 0.518 in 2009 to 0.501 in 2011 in Brazil.

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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.

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In January, China's National Bureau of Statistics released an official Gini coefficient reading for the first time in ten years.

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America's Gini coefficient has risen from 0.34 in the 1980s to 0.38 in the mid-2000s.

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