| Abstract | When leaders and thinkers look forward to East Asia's coming years, the big worries predictably are banking troubles, leaping unemployment and devaluation-fueled inflation. But there is one social timebomb whose long-burning fuse may finally come to an explosive end: inequality. From the 1970s to the 1990s, the Thailand's Gini coefficient, the most common measure of inequality, jumped from 0.43 to 0.55. The gap between rich and poor has also widened considerably in China and Hong Kong, while it is creeping up in South Korea and the Philippines. |
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