Income Inequality Ranked: Gini Index 2026
Where wealth is distributed more equally — Gini coefficient across 36 countries
Gini 25.5
Most equal in our 36-country set — 🇮🇳 India (2022)
⚠️ Some countries (India, Vietnam, Thailand) report consumption-based Gini, which is structurally 10-15 points lower than income-based Gini used by most OECD nations. Cross-country comparisons should be interpreted with this in mind.
| # | Country | Gini |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 🇮🇳 India | 25.5 |
| 2 | 🇳🇱 Netherlands | 25.7 |
| 3 | 🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates | 26.4 |
| 4 | 🇳🇴 Norway | 26.5 |
| 5 | 🇧🇪 Belgium | 26.8 |
| 6 | 🇵🇱 Poland | 28.5 |
| 7 | 🇮🇪 Ireland | 29.0 |
| 8 | 🇸🇪 Sweden | 29.3 |
| 9 | 🇩🇰 Denmark | 29.9 |
| 10 | 🇪🇪 Estonia | 30.7 |
| 11 | 🇨🇦 Canada | 31.1 |
| 12 | 🇫🇷 France | 31.8 |
| 13 | 🇯🇵 Japan | 32.3 |
| 14 | 🇬🇧 United Kingdom | 32.4 |
| 15 | 🇩🇪 Germany | 32.4 |
| 16 | 🇰🇷 South Korea | 32.9 |
| 17 | 🇪🇸 Spain | 33.4 |
| 18 | 🇬🇷 Greece | 33.4 |
| 19 | 🇹🇭 Thailand | 33.5 |
| 20 | 🇦🇺 Australia | 33.8 |
| 21 | 🇨🇭 Switzerland | 33.8 |
| 22 | 🇵🇹 Portugal | 33.9 |
| 23 | 🇮🇹 Italy | 34.3 |
| 24 | 🇻🇳 Vietnam | 36.1 |
| 25 | 🇮🇱 Israel | 37.9 |
| 26 | 🇺🇸 United States | 41.8 |
| 27 | 🇨🇱 Chile | 43.0 |
| 28 | 🇲🇽 Mexico | 43.5 |
| 29 | 🇹🇷 Turkey | 44.5 |
| 30 | 🇧🇷 Brazil | 51.6 |
| 31 | 🇨🇴 Colombia | 53.9 |
| 32 | 🇿🇦 South Africa | 63.0 |
The Gini coefficient measures income inequality on a 0-100 scale, where 0 means everyone earns the same and 100 means one person earns everything. Values below 30 indicate relatively equal societies (most of Northern Europe), 30-40 is moderate, and above 50 is highly unequal (typical of Sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Latin America).
In our 36-country set, 🇮🇳 India has the most equal income distribution with a Gini of 25.5, while 🇿🇦 South Africa shows the sharpest disparity at 63.0. Inequality matters for relocation because it shapes social fabric, crime, healthcare access, and the effective cost of living for non-elites.
Gini data is published irregularly — countries run household income surveys every few years, so the rank uses each country's most recent available measurement (year shown per row). Dataset source: World Bank / Luxembourg Income Study via OWID.
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