The Global Income Inequality project uses household expenditure surveys to provide a comprehensive analysis of the history of global living standards.

We are a team of economists and historians at the University of Sussex investigating global income inequality from the end of the nineteenth century until the 1960s. Rather than looking at global measures of inequality derived from the national accounts, such as those currently used by the World Bank, we will calculate new estimates of world inequality by analysing household expenditure surveys. We have identified around 1500 household budget surveys to date, with a truly global scope.

Our project began in January 2014 and was funded until January 2018.

We are committed to sharing the results of our research and will be updating this website regularly with information about the project, details of conferences and events, and links to other research in this field. On the Surveys and Data tab of this website, we provide further details about our household expenditure survey database. After first use we will share the underlying data that we have extracted. 

We were funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and will be working with The National Archives.