The economy of Denmark is a modern high-income and highly developed mixed economy. The economy of Denmark is dominated by the service sector with 80% of all jobs, whereas about 11% of all employees work in manufacturing and 2% in agriculture. The nominal gross national income per capita was the ninth-highest in the world at $68,827 in 2023.
In economics, the Gini coefficient, also known as the Gini index or Gini ratio, is a measure of statistical dispersion intended to represent the income inequality, the wealth inequality, or the consumption inequality within a nation or a social group. It was developed by Italian statistician and sociologist Corrado Gini.
The economy of Lesotho is based on agriculture, livestock, manufacturing, mining, and depends heavily on inflows of workers’ remittances and receipts from the Southern African Customs Union (SACU). Lesotho is geographically surrounded by South Africa and is economically integrated with it as well. The majority of households subsist on farming. The formal sector employment consist of mainly female workers in the apparel sector. While male migrant laborers work primarily as miners in South Africa for 3 to 9 months and employment in the Government of Lesotho (GOL). Half of the country's population work in informal crop cultivation or animal husbandry.
In ancient times, Maldives were renowned for cowries, coir rope, dried tuna fish, ambergris (maavaharu) and coco de mer (tavakkaashi). Local and foreign trading ships used to load these products in the Maldives and bring them abroad.
The economy of Mauritius is a mixed developing economy based on agriculture, exports, financial services, and tourism. Since the 1980s, the government of Mauritius has sought to diversify the country's economy beyond its dependence on just agriculture, particularly sugar production.
The economy of Namibia has a modern market sector, which produces most of the country's wealth, and a traditional subsistence sector. Although the majority of the population engages in subsistence agriculture and herding, Namibia has more than 200,000 skilled workers and a considerable number of well-trained professionals and managerials.
The economy of South Africa is a mixed economy, emerging market, and upper-middle-income economy, one of only eight such countries in Africa. The economy is the most industrialized, technologically advanced, and diversified economy in Africa. Following 1996, at the end of over twelve years of international sanctions, South Africa's nominal gross domestic product (GDP) almost tripled to a peak of US$416 billion in 2011. In the same period, foreign exchange reserves increased from US$3 billion to nearly US$50 billion, creating a diversified economy with a growing and sizable middle class, within two decades of ending apartheid.
Economic inequality is an umbrella term for a) income inequality or distribution of income, b) wealth inequality or distribution of wealth, and c) consumption inequality. Each of these can be measured between two or more nations, within a single nation, or between and within sub-populations.
In economics, income distribution covers how a country's total GDP is distributed amongst its population. Economic theory and economic policy have long seen income and its distribution as a central concern. Unequal distribution of income causes economic inequality which is a concern in almost all countries around the world.
In economics, personal income refers to the total earnings of an individual from various sources such as wages, investment ventures, and other sources of income. It encompasses all the products and money received by an individual.
Negotiations to end apartheid began in 1990 and continued until President Nelson Mandela's electoral victory as South Africa's first Black president in the first democratic all-races general election of 1994. This signified the legislative end of apartheid in South Africa, a system of widespread racially-based segregation to enforce almost complete separation of white and Black races in South Africa. Before the legislative end of apartheid, whites had held almost complete control over all political and socioeconomic power in South Africa during apartheid, only allowing acquiescent Black traditional leaders to participate in facades of political power. Repercussions from the decades of apartheid continue to resonate through every facet of South African life, despite copious amounts of legislation meant to alleviate inequalities.
Income inequality in the Philippines is the extent to which income, most commonly measured by household or individual, is distributed in an uneven manner in the Philippines.
Nigeria had one of the world's highest economic growth rates, averaging 7.4% according to the Nigeria economic report that was released in July 2019 by the World Bank. Following the oil price collapse in 2014–2016, combined with negative production shocks, the gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate dropped to 2.7% in 2015. In 2016 during its first recession in 25 years, the economy contracted by 1.6%. Nationally, 43 percent of Nigerians live below the poverty line, while another 25 percent are vulnerable. For a country with massive wealth and a huge population to support commerce, a well-developed economy, and plenty of natural resources such as oil, the level of poverty remains unacceptable. However, poverty may have been overestimated due to the lack of information on the extremely huge informal sector of the economy, estimated at around 60% more, of the current GDP figures. As of 2018, the population growth rate is higher than the economic growth rate, leading to a slow rise in poverty. According to a 2018 report by the World Bank, almost half the population is living below the international poverty line, and unemployment peaked at 23.1%.
China's current mainly market economy features a high degree of income inequality. According to the Asian Development Bank Institute, “before China implemented reform and opening-up policies in 1978, its income distribution pattern was characterized as egalitarian in all aspects.”
The economy of the Western Cape in South Africa is dominated by the city of Cape Town, which accounted for 72% of the Western Cape's economic activity in 2016. The single largest contributor to the region's economy is the financial and business services sector, followed by manufacturing. Close to 30% of the gross regional product comes from foreign trade with agricultural products and wine dominating exports. High-tech industries, international call centres, fashion design, advertising and TV production are niche industries rapidly gaining in importance.
The balanced growth theory is an economic theory pioneered by the economist Ragnar Nurkse (1907–1959). The theory hypothesises that the government of any underdeveloped country needs to make large investments in a number of industries simultaneously. This will enlarge the market size, increase productivity, and provide an incentive for the private sector to invest.
Income inequality in India refers to the unequal distribution of wealth and income among its citizens. According to the CIA World Factbook, the Gini coefficient of India, which is a measure of income distribution inequality, was 35.2 in 2011, ranking 95th out of 157. Wealth distribution is also uneven, with one report estimating that 54% of the country's wealth is controlled by millionaires, the second highest after Russia, as of November 2016. The richest 1% of Indians own 58% of wealth, while the richest 10% of Indians own 80% of the wealth. This trend has consistently increased, meaning the rich are getting richer much faster than the poor, widening the income gap. Inequality worsened since the establishment of income tax in 1922, overtaking the British Raj's record of the share of the top 1% in national income, which was 20.7% in 1939–40. According to Oxfam India's report of 2023, "Survival of the Richest: India Story," just 5 per cent of Indians own more than 60 per cent of the country's wealth, while the bottom 50 per cent of the population possess only 3 per cent of the wealth. It also says that between 2012 and 2021, 40% of wealth generated in India has gone to just 1% of the total population and 3% of the wealth has gone to bottom 50%. The number of hungry Indians increased to 350 million in 2022 from 190 million in 2018, while the number of billionaires has increased from 102 in 2020 to 166 in 2022. The covid pandemic reduced the income of the poor, but the wealthy did well. The combined wealth of India's 100 richest is now above $600 billion, which is equivalent to India's Union Budget for 18 months. According to Union Government 's own submission to Supreme Court of India, widespread hunger has caused 65% of deaths of children under the age of 5 in 2022. Saurabh Mukherjee, the founder and CIO of Marcellus Investment Managers, along with his colleague Nandita Rajhansa, has coined the term "Octopus Class" to depict 2 lakh families or around 1 million people in India who control 80% of India's wealth. This class has consolidated financial, social and political power and has continuously pushed its 'tentacles' in every profitable activity they are interested in, aided by liberalisation and consequent growth of globalised economy since 1991.
Sweden enjoys a relatively low income inequality and a high standard of living. Unemployment as of 2017 was estimated to be 6.6% by the CIA World Fact Book, lower than in other European Union countries. The Nordic model of a social welfare society exemplified by Sweden and its near neighbours has often been considered a European success story compared internationally with the socioeconomic structures of other developed industrial nations. This model of state provided social welfare includes many unemployment benefits for the poor, and amply funded health, housing and social security provision. within essentially corruption free nations subscribing to principles of a measure of openness of information about government activity. The Income inequality in Sweden ranks low in the Gini coefficient, being 25.2 as of 2015 which is one of the lowest in the world, and ranking similarly to the other Nordic countries; although inequality has recently been on the rise and several central European countries now have a lower Gini coefficient than Sweden.
The Elephant Curve, also known as the Lakner-Milanovic graph or the global growth incidence curve, is a graph that illustrates the unequal distribution of income growth for individuals belonging to different income groups. The original graph was published in 2013 and illustrates the change in income growth that occurred from 1988 to 2008. The x axis of the graph shows the percentiles of the global income distribution. The y axis shows the cumulative growth rate percentage of income. The main conclusion that can be drawn from the graph is that the global top 1% experienced around a 60% increase in income, whereas the income of the global middle increased 70 to 80%.