The World-Economy and the Distribution of Income Within States: A Cross-National Study

Abstract

This chapter is an explicit attempt to test some of the concepts presented in Wallerstein’s world-system theory. Richard Rubinson asserts that it only makes sense to examine the question of income inequality in a global perspective since individual states are tied together in a single system of production, i.e., the capitalist world economy. Within this economy there is a geographic division of labor in which peripheral states specialize in the production of raw materials while the core states turn those materials into manufactured goods. In this system, the economically more powerful states will enjoy a more equal distribution of income than the less powerful states. Rubinson tests this thesis with historical data from the United States and Great Britain. He then conducts a cross-sectional empirical analysis using income inequality data. The results of both the historical and empirical analysis, according to Rubinson, substantiate the world-system perspective.

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