The United States is an outlier among rich nations, and only Russia and Mexico, two middle-income economies, have higher levels of inequality. A low-income American at the 10th percentile has an income that is only 37 percent of the median income. By contrast, in most countries of central, northern and eastern Europe the income of the poor exceeds 50 percent of the income of middle-income person; in the other English-speaking nations and in the southern European countries, plus Israel, it is above 40 percent. Only in Russia and Mexico do the poor fare relatively worse than in the United States.
Andrea Brandolini and Timothy M. Smeeding in Inequality Patterns in Western-Type Democracies: Cross-Country Differences and Time Changes (pdf) (via quotingthecrisis)
