New Macro Update

What’s new in the World Inequality Database?

The World Inequality Lab released its 2024 macro update with new series on:

• Update of the macro series to 2023,
• General government expenditure in all countries in the world since 1980, including:
  • The level and composition of public spending by function of government, with a particular focus on education, healthcare, and social protection,
  • General government revenue and its composition,
  • Debt service cost and government primary budget balance
• Foreign wealth and capital income in all countries since 1970.

Why it matters?

Despite severe limitations in some countries,  the general government expenditure data opens new avenues for studying the evolution of the size of governments and the role of public spending in reducing poverty and inequality, as developed in Gethin (2023), and for constructing comparable estimates of post-tax income inequality, as developed in Fisher-Post and Gethin (2023).

The foreign wealth and capital income data allows to check the balance of payments and international investment position –  i.e which country has the highest/lowest liabilities and assets – as used in Nievas, Sodano (2024).

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More about the methodology

• To find out more about the new series and variables, read Technical notes:
  • “A New Database of General Government Revenue and Expenditure by Function, 1980-2022” World Inequality Lab Technical Note, 2024/01
  • “World Totals in WID: Core Territories, Core Countries and Core Macro and Distributional Variables, 1820-2023“, World Inequality Lab Technical Note, 2024/02
• To know how to use and download the data, refer to the Codes Dictionary.