The surprising finding of this book is that, contrary to conventional wisdom, global income inequality is decreasing.
Critics of globalization and others maintain that the spread of consumer capitalism is dramatically polarizing
the worldwide distribution of income. But as the demographer Glenn Firebaugh carefully shows, income inequality
for the world peaked in the late twentieth century and is now heading downward because of declining income inequality
across nations. Furthermore, as income inequality declines across nations, it is rising within nations (though
not as rapidly as it is declining across nations). Firebaugh claims that this historic transition represents a
new geography of global income inequality in the twenty-first century.