Trends in global wealth inequality from a world systems theory perspective

The rapid expansion of the world economy between the 1990s and 2008 impacted on levels of between-nation and within-nation wealth inequality. Drawing on world systems theory and Wright’s class schema, I examine the relationship between stratification within the world economy and stratification within national economies whereby exploitation within nations is overlayed by exploitation between nations. In the past, research into levels of wealth inequality, at both a national and a global level, has been constrained by a lack of data, therefore, in this paper, I use data from a new longitudinal dataset which includes measures of the net worth and location of the wealthiest individuals in the world. I find that although the expansion of the world economy, largely due to the rapid growth of the economies of three semi-peripheral nations- India, Russia and China, has led to a decline in between-nation inequality, it has also generated increases in within-nation inequality. If these trends signal a redistribution of global wealth from the core to the semi-periphery there will be a decline in the economic power of the core and will undermine its ability to maintain its dominance of the world economy.