World economy,level development and income distribution: An integration of different approaches to the explanation of income inequality

The paper briefly outlines explanations of international differences in personal income distribution that have been formulated within the ‘world economy’ and the ‘level of development’ paradigm. The predictive power of the central variables of the paradigms are tested in a cross-national regression analysis with 72 countries. The regression results suggest support for hypotheses from both paradigms, but also suggest a partial integration of theoretical elements from both paradigms. The outcome of the proposed theoretical integration offers a new interpretation of the well-known curvilinear relationship between level of development and income inequality. This new view on the curvature of the relationship expects the integration into the world economy to result in increased income inequality in peripheral countries. But different from other views it is not implied that inequality is substantially reduced in development. The core and periphery position of countries in the world economy is seen to stabilize income inequality differences between these groups of countries. Under these circumstances, developing countries generally cannot be expected to reduce substantially their income inequality in the course of economic growth.