placestats

Inequality-adjusted HDI vs. Redistribution

Fades after adjusting for income

Across 45 countries, Inequality-adjusted HDI and Redistribution rise and fall together at r = +0.75 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). Comparing only countries with similar income (GDP per person) shrinks it to +0.50, which could easily be chance (q = 0.073, allowing for the many pairs tested, and allowing for countries in the same region being alike). So the first figure mostly shows richer countries differing from poorer ones, not a link between these two things.

Comparing countries across the middle half of redistribution, 23.2% to 38.1% reduction in the Gini, inequality-adjusted hdi is better by 0.0972 points at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 0.0387 points.

Link before adjusting (r)+0.750p = 3.0e-9 · 45 countries
After adjusting for national income+0.498p = 0.001 · likely range [+0.24, +0.69]
p, allowing for regions0.002standard error 0.092 · 7 regions
Check for luck (q)0.073across 12,497 pairs

How to read these.r runs from −1 (one goes up as the other goes down) to +1 (they rise together), and 0 means no link. Adjusting for national income means comparing countries with the same GDP per person, so differences in wealth can’t explain the link. Income is used in percentage terms, since an extra $1,000 means more to a poor country than to a rich one. p is how likely a link this strong would be if there were really none. Below 0.05 means it is unlikely to be chance. Very small values are written in short form: 1.1e-32 means a decimal point followed by 31 zeros and then 11, so very close to zero. The likely range is where the true figure probably lies, and a range that crosses zero means the link could easily be chance. Countries in the same region tend to resemble each other, so the third figure allows for that, which gives a fairer p. The standard error is the typical size of the error in r. Finally, testing this many pairs means some will look strong by luck alone. A q below 0.05 means this link is unlikely to be one of those.

Inequality-adjusted HDI · index, 0 to 1link with income +0.94 · proxy
Redistribution · % reduction in the Ginilink with income +0.50 · moderate

“Link with income” is how closely each measure tracks GDP per person across countries, from −1 to +1.

Every country as a dot

Inequality-adjusted HDI · index, 0 to 1 →Redistribution · % reduction in the Gini →0.4750.9232.67%48.3%Australia: 0.873 index, 0 to 1, 27.7% reduction in the GiniAustria: 0.861 index, 0 to 1, 41.4% reduction in the GiniBelgium: 0.891 index, 0 to 1, 47.7% reduction in the GiniBulgaria: 0.748 index, 0 to 1, 26% reduction in the GiniBrazil: 0.594 index, 0 to 1, 13.8% reduction in the GiniCanada: 0.867 index, 0 to 1, 29.3% reduction in the GiniSwitzerland: 0.894 index, 0 to 1, 21.2% reduction in the GiniChile: 0.723 index, 0 to 1, 8.68% reduction in the GiniChina: 0.67 index, 0 to 1, 6.22% reduction in the GiniCosta Rica: 0.678 index, 0 to 1, 12.6% reduction in the GiniCzechia: 0.867 index, 0 to 1, 43.5% reduction in the GiniGermany: 0.89 index, 0 to 1, 38.7% reduction in the GiniDenmark: 0.909 index, 0 to 1, 37.5% reduction in the GiniSpain: 0.819 index, 0 to 1, 34.4% reduction in the GiniEstonia: 0.841 index, 0 to 1, 33.5% reduction in the GiniFinland: 0.891 index, 0 to 1, 47.2% reduction in the GiniFrance: 0.836 index, 0 to 1, 42.2% reduction in the GiniUnited Kingdom: 0.869 index, 0 to 1, 29.7% reduction in the GiniGreece: 0.825 index, 0 to 1, 36.9% reduction in the GiniCroatia: 0.828 index, 0 to 1, 33.1% reduction in the GiniHungary: 0.819 index, 0 to 1, 29.4% reduction in the GiniIndia: 0.475 index, 0 to 1, 2.67% reduction in the GiniIreland: 0.886 index, 0 to 1, 41.2% reduction in the GiniIceland: 0.923 index, 0 to 1, 35.7% reduction in the GiniIsrael: 0.813 index, 0 to 1, 23.2% reduction in the GiniItaly: 0.817 index, 0 to 1, 36.2% reduction in the GiniJapan: 0.845 index, 0 to 1, 34.1% reduction in the GiniKorea, Rep.: 0.857 index, 0 to 1, 18.2% reduction in the GiniLithuania: 0.812 index, 0 to 1, 29.7% reduction in the GiniLuxembourg: 0.838 index, 0 to 1, 35.7% reduction in the GiniLatvia: 0.812 index, 0 to 1, 28.1% reduction in the GiniMexico: 0.646 index, 0 to 1, 3.77% reduction in the GiniNetherlands: 0.892 index, 0 to 1, 34.2% reduction in the GiniNorway: 0.909 index, 0 to 1, 39.5% reduction in the GiniNew Zealand: 0.853 index, 0 to 1, 28.7% reduction in the GiniPoland: 0.817 index, 0 to 1, 41.9% reduction in the GiniPortugal: 0.795 index, 0 to 1, 36.5% reduction in the GiniRomania: 0.758 index, 0 to 1, 38.1% reduction in the GiniRussian Federation: 0.758 index, 0 to 1, 27% reduction in the GiniSlovak Republic: 0.833 index, 0 to 1, 48.3% reduction in the GiniSlovenia: 0.885 index, 0 to 1, 42.4% reduction in the GiniSweden: 0.886 index, 0 to 1, 33.1% reduction in the GiniTurkiye: 0.708 index, 0 to 1, 18.6% reduction in the GiniUnited States: 0.832 index, 0 to 1, 22.1% reduction in the GiniSouth Africa: 0.476 index, 0 to 1, 12.8% reduction in the GiniBELCHECHLFININDKORMEXROUSVKSVNZAF

best-fit line line after adjusting

Four ways to measure the link

MethodrpCountries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted+0.7503.0e-945
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted+0.5862.3e-545
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income+0.4980.00145
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income+0.3600.01645

The rank version uses only each country’s place in line, from lowest to highest, so a few extreme countries count for less. The adjusted and unadjusted versions use the same 45 countries: those that report both measures and GDP per person. So the gap between them comes from the adjustment, not from a change in which countries are counted. Drop in the size of r after adjusting: +0.252 (a minus sign means it grew).

How solid is it?

Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from +0.468 (without USA) to +0.547 (without ZAF). The bar above shows that range on a scale from −1 to +1, with the solid line at the full result. The single country that moves r most: ZAF (+0.048).

Within each region

Countries are not separate, unrelated cases, and neighbors share a lot. A link that holds inside each region is far more believable than one that shows up only when comparing regions.

nr
Europe & Central Asia31+0.45

By income third

If the link shows up only in the richest third of countries, it is a feature of rich countries, not a general pattern.

nr
Poorest third15+0.33
Middle third15+0.30
Richest third15+0.34

By largest religious group

Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.

nr
Christians36+0.51

Without outliers (countries far outside the middle half of countries on either measure, by more than one and a half times the width of that middle half): r = +0.438 after dropping 6 countries.

Two series, one country

Both measures over the years for one country you pick. The two charts are stacked so they share only the years along the bottom.

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Over time, within countries

Everything above compares countries with each other at one moment. This section compares each country only with itself over 13years. So a link here can’t come from anything about a country that stays the same, such as its history, geography, institutions or culture.

Within countries over time, there is no link that is clearly more than chance (r = +0.157, comparing each country only with itself over the years, and each year only with the same year elsewhere). Whatever the cross-country picture shows, countries whose inequality-adjusted hdi moved did not tend to see their redistribution move with it.

Across countries (adjusted)+0.498for comparison
Within countries+0.124each country vs itself
…and vs the same year elsewhere+0.157q = 0.467 · 38 countries
Year-on-year changes-0.057q = 0.680
Read with care.
  • Almost all of this indicator's variation is between countries, not within them, so the within-country estimate rests on a small part of the data.

427 country-years (one country in one year), 38 countries, 2011–2023, about 11 years each on average. Share of the variation that happens within countries over time: 4% for Inequality-adjusted HDI, 3% for Redistribution. The margins of error allow for each country appearing many times, and for each year’s value being close to the year before.

Year-to-year changes are a cautious test, not a final answer. Looking only at changes from one year to the next removes each country’s own trends. But it also makes measurement mistakes louder, which pulls the results toward zero. A near-zero result here is weak evidence of no link, not proof.

With one measure years behind the other

0.40−0.4-60+7years Redistribution trails Inequality-adjusted HDI →lag -6: r = -0.042 (n = 217)lag -5: r = -0.033 (n = 249)lag -4: r = -0.052 (n = 286)lag -3: r = -0.069 (n = 337)lag -2: r = 0.036 (n = 367)lag -1: r = 0.160 (n = 410)lag +0: r = 0.157 (n = 427)lag +1: r = 0.195 (n = 425)lag +2: r = 0.221 (n = 395)lag +3: r = 0.285 (n = 360)lag +4: r = 0.301 (n = 323)lag +5: r = 0.226 (n = 282)lag +6: r = 0.024 (n = 238)lag +7: r = -0.073 (n = 209)

Same year (lag 0): +0.157. A peak away from zero does not show which comes first. These series change slowly — this year’s value is close to last year’s. That makes the curve smooth and nearly symmetric, whatever produced the data. Even a sharp peak at one lag (a gap of some years) would not prove that one measure changes the other.

The largest value on this curve (+0.30 at lag +4) is higher than the same-year one by 0.14. That gap is not a finding. It is the largest of 14 closely related estimates, and picking the biggest of many tests always makes it look bigger. That is exactly why nothing on this site is ranked or chosen by lag.

The data


index, 0 to 1
% reduction in the Gini		Years
Iceland ISL0.92335.7%2023, 2019
Norway NOR0.90939.5%2023, 2022
Denmark DNK0.90937.5%2023, 2022
Switzerland CHE0.89421.2%2023, 2022
Netherlands NLD0.89234.2%2023
Finland FIN0.89147.2%2023
Belgium BEL0.89147.7%2023
Germany DEU0.8938.7%2023, 2022
Sweden SWE0.88633.1%2023
Ireland IRL0.88641.2%2023
Slovenia SVN0.88542.4%2023
Australia AUS0.87327.7%2023, 2020
United Kingdom GBR0.86929.7%2023
Czechia CZE0.86743.5%2023
Canada CAN0.86729.3%2023

United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2025
OECD databases as named on each indicator: PISA, Social Expenditure Database (SOCX), Income Distribution Database, Development Assistance Committee statistics, Family Database, Government at a Glance, Corporate Tax Statistics, employment and environment statistics

Sources

Inequality-adjusted HDI

Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index

United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report Office · via Our World in Data · CC BY 3.0 IGO · updated annual · comparable from 2010 only

The HDI marked down for how unequally each of its three parts is spread within the country. The gap between this and the HDI is what inequality costs, and that is the number worth reading. The level itself is the HDI again, with its parts flagged the same way.

Redistribution

Reduction in the Gini coefficient from taxes and transfers

OECD · via Our World in Data · CC BY 4.0 (OECD terms and conditions) · updated annual, except the snapshots noted per indicator · comparable from 2011 only

The Gini before taxes and payments minus the Gini after them, as a share of the first. It shows how much of the inequality produced by the market the government removes. It is built from the before-tax Gini above, so their pair is built from the same numbers and flagged. No "better" direction is set: a country may redistribute little because its market incomes are already equal.

How this was computed

Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2011–2024. To adjust for income, each measure is first predicted from GDP per person (in percentage terms, on a log scale) with a straight-line fit. Only what is left over is then compared. This is called a partial correlation. The line is drawn the standard way (ordinary least squares), which picks the line that comes closest to all the countries at once. The error margins allow for countries in the same region resembling each other, using 7 World Bank regions. The q-value corrects for testing all 12,497 pairs at once, using the Benjamini–Hochberg method. Underlying data last updated DYB 2024. How the country data works · explore Inequality-adjusted HDI and Redistribution

This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Inequality-adjusted HDI changes Redistribution, or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.

More links with Inequality-adjusted HDI or Redistribution