Gini Coefficient was developed by Italian statistician Corrodo Gini to provide a mathematical expression of the degree of concentration of wealth or income. For measurements of income inequality at a given point in time, the most widely-used measure is the Gini coefficient. Gini coefficent has been criticized over the years, but Gini coefficent continues to be used by social scientists describing inequality or comparing inequality among nations. Gini coefficient is superior for comparative analysis. Different researchers can and do obtain different values of the Gini coefficient for the same country. A Lorenz Curve and a Gini Coefficent are ways of measuring the degree of income inequality in a society. Lorenz curve provides a fuller grasp of how the Gini coefficient is determined.
In a completely equal society, the Gini coefficient is zero, no inequality, and in a society in which one person has all the income it is 100. So the higher the value, the more unequal the society.
A Gini coefficent of approximately 0.400 is normal for most developed economies. The economy and society are not physical systems which we can put on a pair of scales and measure exactly. The result is that different researchers can and do obtain different values of the Gini coefficient for the same country.
Singapore's Gini co-efficient, a measure of income inequality, hit 0.478 in 2012, according to government figures, higher than every other advanced economy aside from Hong Kong.
However measured, Gini coefficient value in Britain and America is now higher than it was 20 years ago. Deininger and Squire reported for the World Bank in 1996 some 693 calculations of Gini coefficients since the war in different countries around the world. For most of the postwar period, the US Gini coefficient was in the low to mid-30s; it now seems to be in the low to mid-40s.
Income inequality is much greater in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, which have Gini coefficients in the upper 40s, than in east and south Asia, which have Gini coefficients in the middle-to-upper 30s. The OECD countries have relatively egalitarian distributions of income, with Gini coefficients around 30, while the eastern European countries have historically had very low Gini coefficients.
In the 1950s, Korea was a poor but very egalitarian society. During its phase of phenomenal growth, inequalities opened up and its Gini coefficient approached 40. Now that Korean income is close to the average income levels of the west, prosperity is being more widely shared, and the Gini has dropped back to the low 30s.