毕竟全球化可能不会加剧收入不平等

经济学人：

Working out who earns what is surprisingly tricky. Both the very rich, who sometimes try to keep their wealth from the taxman, and the very poor, who are sometimes mistrustful of clipboard-wielding officials, are especially hard to pin down. Nevertheless, before the covid-19 pandemic, household surveys consistently found a fall in the number of people living in poverty. The World Bank counted 659m living on less than $2.15 a day in 2019, down from around 2bn in 1990.

弄清楚谁赚多少钱是非常棘手的。无论是非常富有的人（有时试图向税务员隐瞒自己的财富）还是非常贫穷的人（有时不信任挥舞着剪贴板的官员），都特别难以确定。然而，在 covid-19 大流行之前，家庭调查一致发现贫困人口数量有所下降。世界银行估计，2019 年有 6.59 亿人每天生活费不足 2.15 美元，低于 1990 年的约 20 亿。

Yet this progress came at a cost: a global “precariat” emerged, members of which were barely out of poverty and perilously exposed to shocks, while the top 1% got rich faster. That, at least, is the received wisdom. The World Inequality Database, a project associated with Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman, two economists, combines tax data with other sources of information to estimate the incomes of the uber-rich. They have found that although inequality between countries has fallen, as the rest has caught up with the West, within countries it may have risen. Chinese and Indian elites have done the best relative to their countrymen. American and European plutocrats, who are busy stashing wealth in tax havens, have done well, too.

然而，这一进步是有代价的：全球 “不稳定阶层” 出现了，他们的成员几乎没有摆脱贫困，还面临着遭受冲击的危险，而顶层 1% 的人则更快致富。至少，这是公认的智慧。世界不平等数据库是与两位经济学家托马斯 · 皮凯蒂和加布里埃尔 · 祖克曼相关的一个项目，它将税收数据与其他信息来源结合起来，以估算超级富豪的收入。他们发现，尽管国家之间的不平等已经下降，而且其他国家已经赶上了西方国家，但国家内部的不平等可能有所加剧。中国和印度的精英相对于他们的同胞来说做得最好。忙于将财富藏匿在避税天堂的美国和欧洲富豪也表现出色。

A new paper by Maxim Pinkovskiy, Xavier Sala-i-Martin, Kasey Chatterji-Len and William Nober, economists at Columbia University and the New York branch of the Federal Reserve, challenges this picture. The researchers look at how likely people in different parts of the income distribution are to understate their income. They find that as the poor become richer, they become more likely to do so. Once adjustments are made for this, poverty has fallen faster than previously thought, and inequality within countries has not risen. It may even have fallen slightly.

哥伦比亚大学和美联储纽约分行的经济学家 Maxim Pinkovskiy、Xavier Sala-i-Martin、Kasey Chatterji-Len 和 William Nober 发表的一篇新论文对这一观点提出了挑战。研究人员研究了收入分配不同部分的人们低估自己收入的可能性。他们发现，随着穷人变得更富有，他们也更有可能这样做。一旦对此进行调整，贫困下降的速度就会比之前想象的要快，而且国家内部的不平等也不会加剧。甚至可能略有下降。

To reach this conclusion, the authors look at the difference between estimates of income from regional household surveys and gross domestic product in the same area. When surveys imply that a region has less overall income than official figures, it suggests more income is going unreported. The researchers find that the richer an area, the larger the gap tends to be. This makes sense, notes Mr Sala-i-Martin. As a subsistence farmer becomes a small business owner or market trader, he develops more complex income streams and has more incentive to mislead the taxman.

为了得出这一结论，作者研究了区域家庭调查收入估计值与同一地区国内生产总值之间的差异。当调查显示某个地区的总收入低于官方数据时，就表明有更多收入未被报告。研究人员发现，越富裕的地区，贫富差距往往越大。萨拉 · 伊 · 马丁先生指出，这是有道理的。当自给自足的农民成为小企业主或市场交易商时，他会开发出更复杂的收入流，并且更有动力误导税务人员。

If the finding holds, it changes the history of globalisation. Rather than a precariat, the researchers conclude that a “true global middle class” has emerged. Its members will not be plunged back into poverty by a financial crisis or a pandemic.

如果这一发现成立，它将改变全球化的历史。研究人员得出的结论是，“真正的全球中产阶级” 已经出现，而不是不稳定的阶层。其成员不会因金融危机或流行病而重新陷入贫困。

Yet the study will not be the final word. Economists have been arguing about trends in global inequality—and the quality of the data that lie beneath them—for decades. When it comes to the world’s richest people, the new research has more to say about the top 10% than the top 1%, who are widely believed to have done so much better than the rest. Like most papers, this one relies on assumptions that could be challenged by other researchers. Working out the global income distribution is one thing; convincing others you have the right answer is quite another. ■

然而这项研究并不是最终的结论。几十年来，经济学家一直在争论全球不平等的趋势以及背后的数据质量。当谈到世界上最富有的人时，新的研究更多地涉及了前 10% 的人，而不是前 1% 的人，人们普遍认为他们比其他人做得更好。与大多数论文一样，这篇论文所依赖的假设可能会受到其他研究人员的挑战。制定全球收入分配是一回事，另一回事是另一回事。说服别人你有正确的答案是另一回事。 ■