Another look to income polarization across countries

In this note we analyze international income polarization by using several well-behaved polarization indexes and the data provided by an updated version of the well-known Penn World Tables. The empirical evidence suggests that polarization follows a curvilinear pattern, with initial growth followed by decline, in clear contrast to the pattern of monotonous growth found by Seshanna and Decornez [Seshanna, S. and Decornez, S. (2003). Income polarization and inequality across countries: An empirical study. Journal of Policy Modeling, 25, 335-358]. The exclusion of China and India from the analysis also fails to provide results that are consistent with a continued growth in polarization. Inequality also shows the same temporal pattern. These results seem to reinforce the non-pessimistic views about the effects from globalization to international income distribution.