In 1800, few countries had achieved economic growth. Our entry on global extreme poverty shows that at the beginning of the 19th century the huge majority—more than 80%—of the world lived in material conditions that we would refer to as extreme poverty today.

Global inequality is driven by changes both of the inequality within countries and the inequality between countries.

In the year 1975, 175 years later, the world had changed—it had become very unequal. The world income distribution was bimodal, with the two-humped shape of a camel. The world had divided into a poor, developing world and a developed world that was more than 10-times richer.

Over the following 4 decades the world income distribution has again changed dramatically. The poorer countries, especially in South-East Asia, have caught up. World income inequality has declined. And not only is the world more equal again, the distribution has also shifted to the right—the incomes of the world’s poorest citizens have increased and poverty has fallen faster than ever before in human history.

Read the full article on global economic inequality by Max Roser at Our World in Data