The Elephant Graph and Income Distribution

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This chapter discusses the concept of the 'elephant graph' and its implications for income distribution globally. The speaker explains that the graph represents an elephant with its trunk raised high, symbolizing the income growth of the lower middle class and middle class globally. However, there is a significant drop in income growth once you reach the 70th-80th percentile of the global income distribution, representing the upper middle class. The graph then shows a sharp increase in wealth for the top 1% globally.

Yascha Mounk and Branko Milanovic discuss the history and trajectory of global inequality.

Branko Milanovic is an economist and a professor in the Graduate Center at The City University of New York. Formerly a lead economist at the World Bank, he is the author, most recently, of Visions of Inequality: From the French Revolution to the End of the Cold War.

In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Branko Milanovic discuss Milanovic’s famous “Elephant Curve” graph and why global income growth is not as unequally distributed as he once thought; how we should think about globalization and its effects on the global balance of power; and why Milanovic does not consider himself a philosophical liberal.

This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

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