What is the most unequal country in South America? It depends on what metric you look at.
One way to measure income inequality is to look at the share of all income that goes to the top income earners.
The chart plots this for all seven South American countries with comparable 2022 pre-tax income estimates in the World Inequality Database.
The difference between the left and right bars is which earners they cover: the richest 10% on the left, the richest 0.1% on the right.
Looking at the left-hand bars, Colombia ranks top. It has the highest share going to the richest 10%, followed by Chile, Brazil, and Peru — in these four countries, the top 10% share earns more than half of all income. This is high relative to other countries around the world.
But looking at the dark blue bars on the right, the rankings change. Peru’s richest 0.1% receive about 22% of income, the highest in the region by far, and actually the highest in the world that year.
This chart shows just two metrics, but you would also get different pictures if you looked at Gini coefficients or the distribution of wealth instead.
So, what is the most unequal country in South America? It depends on what metric you look at.
This is a region with high inequalities, but different indicators will tell you different stories depending on which part of the distribution you examine, and how incomes are measured.
(This Data Insight was written by @EOrtizOspina.)
Here are some other views of Kīlauea summit eruption lava fountaining episode 38 in Halema‘uma‘u crater on the Island of Hawai‘i, and answers to some of your questions about this activity.
This eruptive episode began from the north vent at about 8:45 am HST this morning, December 6. Smaller fountains began from the south vent at 8:49 am HST and quickly grew to over 1000 feet (300 meters) high and inclined to the south, towards a closed area of Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park. At 9:55 a.m., hot tephra falling from this fountain destroyed the V3 streaming camera site located within less than a mile (2,000 ft/500 m) from the eruptive vents; its burial highlights the hazardous nature of this closed area. The north vent stopped erupting at 11:50 a.m., but the south vent is still fountaining as of this posting.
In addition to the tephra, volcanic gas is being emitted, with sulfur dioxide emission rates likely exceeding 50,000 tonnes per day. The high effusion rate of this episode is also producing a very dramatic plume extending over 20,000 feet above sea level. Both the National Weather Service and Washington Volcanic Ash Advisory Center issued special advisories about this plume, and the Hawaii County Civil Defense Agency issued a message about the potential for fine glass particles in communities downwind.
Kīlauea's recent eruptive episodes have gone on for 5-9 hours; this episode has been active for about 4.5 hours now. The USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory staff are closely monitoring this activity, coordinating with partners at Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park and the Hawaii County Civil Defense Agency. #Kilauea #lava #eruption
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Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian Nobel winner whose novels explored the military dictatorships and political corruption of Latin America, has died at age 89 https://t.co/WjkpipdSIR