Income Inequality Tracker Screensaver
The Income Inequality Tracker screensaver ranks countries by real income inequality using the Gini index on a live bar board, drawn key-less from the World Bank's open data API. It's free, runs in your browser, and ESC exits.
Live preview
Press ESC to leave fullscreen. Settings are saved in your browser only.
How the Income Inequality Tracker screensaver works
The saver fetches the latest published Gini index figures for every country from the World Bank's open data API, with no key required.
Countries rank by real inequality level, with each bar sized to scale.
The board eases smoothly if the ranking shifts on refresh.
Choose how many countries appear on the board at once.
What the Gini coefficient measures
The Gini coefficient was introduced by the Italian statistician Corrado Gini in his 1912 work Variabilità e mutabilità. It summarises how unevenly income or consumption is spread across a population in one number. The World Bank presents it as an index from 0 to 100, where 0 is perfect equality and 100 is perfect inequality. It is read from the Lorenz curve, which plots the cumulative share of income against the cumulative share of people ranked from poorest to richest.
The World Bank’s Gini series comes from its Poverty and Inequality Platform, which draws on household survey data from government statistical agencies and World Bank country departments. Data for high-income economies mostly come from the Luxembourg Income Study. Surveys do not all measure the same thing: some capture income and some capture consumption, so figures are not strictly comparable, and the survey years vary. The latest value for each country can come from a different year.
A single number compresses a whole distribution, so two countries with the same score can have different shapes, and two different Lorenz curves can give the same Gini. The index is also relative: it says nothing about the absolute level of living standards. Compare countries carefully, checking the survey year and type.
A worked example
You'll see real inequality figures ranging widely by region — the World Bank's own published Gini scores, not an estimate or model.
Settings & tips
- Countries shown sets how many bars appear.
- Accent recolours the bars.
- A higher Gini score means greater real income inequality; zero would mean perfect equality.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the Gini index?
- A real, standard economic measure of income distribution — 0 is perfect equality, 100 is maximal inequality.
- Is a key needed?
- No — the World Bank's open data API is free and key-less.
- How current are the figures?
- As current as each country's latest published World Bank survey data.
- Is it free?
- Yes — free, no download, in your browser.
- Does a high Gini mean a country is poor?
- No. It measures how evenly income or consumption is shared, not how much there is, so rich and poor countries can have either high or low values.
- Why are the data years different between countries?
- The figures come from household surveys, which are run on each country’s own schedule, so the most recent value for each country can come from a different year.
- What is the Lorenz curve?
- It plots the cumulative share of income held against the cumulative share of the population, ranked from poorest to richest. The Gini index summarises how far that curve falls below the line of perfect equality.