A telling statistic from More Brazilians Have Phones Than Safe Sewage?:
The Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics said in a report that the number of households with telephones hit 61.6 percent last year, while just 46.4 percent were connected to an appropriate sewage network.The percentage of households with fixed or mobile telephone lines tripled in the last 10 years, highlighting the country’s recent telecommunications boom following the privatization of the Telebras company five years ago, the study found.
I guess it’s not as easy to privatize the sewage network…
The richest 10 percent of Brazil’s workers accounted for 46.1 percent of total income while the poorest 10 percent had just 1 percent.Brazil is considered to have the world’s worst income distribution.
Well, at least the have-nots consider it to have the world’s worst income distribution…
Actually, a quick web search found a very similar statistic for Australia (for wealth, not income). According to the World Socialist Web Site:
In July 1993, after 11 years of a Labor Party government led by Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, the wealthiest 50 percent of households owned about 93 percent of the total wealth. No less than 43.5 percent was held by the richest 10 percent and 12.2 percent by the top 1 percent.By mid-1998, after three further years of Labor rule and two years of Liberal-National Party government under John Howard, the richest 10 percent had increased their total share of wealth by 4.6 percentage points to 48.2 percent.
Similarly, British Columbia demonstrates a significant wealth gap between rich and poor:
The BC data show that the wealthiest 10 percent of family units held 54.6 percent of the province’s personal wealth at last count (compared to 53 percent nationally), and the top 50 percent controlled an almost unbelievable 95.7 percent of the personal wealth (compared to 94.4 percent nationally). That left only 4.3 percent of the wealth for the bottom 50 percent of British Columbian family units.
Of course, Pareto realized in 1906 that 80 percent of Italian land was owned by 20 percent of the population — hence Pareto’s 80-20 rule (which applies all over the place, not just in land distribution).