Between -nation social inequalities in the late twentieth century

This dissertation is a first attempt at a careful, social scientific study of recent trends in between-nation social inequalities, broadly defined. Time-series data on average national income, educational attainment, and life expectancy for over 100 nations are used to analyze between-nation inequality trends in the last decades of the twentieth century. Each social indicator---income, educational attainment, and life expectancy---is the subject of a separate empirical chapter. Summary inequality indexes are used to measure inequality across nations and estimate trends over time. Results show that both the direction of the recent inequality trend and its proximate causes vary across different social indicators. Income inequality and educational inequality across nations have both declined since 1980, but between-nation health inequality has recently increased. Empirical analyses are framed by recent theoretical debates about globalization and global inequalities at the dawn of the twenty-first century.