Global inequality at lower levels now

This century has known a stunning , bringing it down to levels not seen in well over a century. That's the conclusion that Branko Milanovic, one of the world's foremost inequality researchers, comes to in an important  for Foreign Affairs.

Why it matters: The U.S. has only about 4% of the world's population. Increasing equality is good for the planet as a whole, but it foreshadows an end to U.S. hegemony.

By the numbers: Inequality is measured using the Gini coefficient, which runs on a scale from 0 (perfect equality) to 100 (where one person would have all of the world's income).

On that scale, inequality fell from 69 in 2000 to 60 in 2018 — and is almost certainly even lower today. That means the world is more equal now than at any point since about 1875.

Between the lines: The part of that number due to inequality within countries has ticked up slightly — it now stands at about 13, up from 7 in the 1990s. Conversely, the component due to inequality between countries plunged from a high of 63 in 1988 to just 47 in 2018.

That's a complete reversal of what happened during most of the Cold War, when inequality between countries was rising but inequality within countries fell dramatically.

Be smart: What we're seeing is not just China getting richer, although that is a large part of the story.

"In the 1970s, India's share of global GDP was less than three percent, whereas that of Germany, a major industrial power, was seven percent," notes Milanovic. "By 2021, those proportions had been swapped."

The big picture: People who are poor by U.S. and other rich countries' standards have been rich by global standards for as long as anyone can remember.

"[T]hey are now being overtaken, in terms of their incomes, by people in Asia," writes Milanovic.