However, the fact that people in poorer countries have been catching up with those in richer countries doesn’t mean that the world has become equal. In fact, the world as a whole is probably more unequal than almost any one country on its own. For instance, while there are now more middle-class Indians than ever before, the country has also become more unequal internally.
Estimates suggest that the Gini coefficient of the whole world is around 0.7. To put that in perspective, a relatively equal country like Sweden has a Gini coefficient a bit below 0.3; the coefficient for the US was around 0.35 in 1950 and is a little over 0.4 today; Brazil is at 0.6.