I think that when looking at inequality inside a nation you need to exclude some portion of the wealthiest people. A few outliers can cloud the real picture. Just like looking at averages does not give the best understand so we use median wealth or income. I would be interested in a measure of the gap between the median income and the poorest people's income. Say you plotted income by decile or centile what is the shape of the curve to the left of the median. In the USA we all know the right-hand side of the curve seems to reach to infinity when plotted on any reasonable scale and the tail on the left goes to almost zero if we are talking income (even beggars get food stamps and handouts that should count as income). What would be telling would be if the left-hand tail is fat with much of the people in the bottom deciles still having modest incomes or is it skinny with the bottom deciles being in abject poverty. The point of measuring the wealth gap is that poverty is relative, but I believe it is not relative to the wealthiest (who are so rich we can't really understand) but the median wealth (which most of us can relate too). If 20 percent of the population live on a third of the median income, then we got a serious problem. If 10 percent of the population has 10 or 100 times the median income, so what, except maybe they might be expected to pay more taxes.

https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.k-tcsvAqq4mIXtWt8GB6SwAAAA?pid=ImgDet&rs=1

That image could be evaluated to come to some meaningful conclusions. If the data is accurate and the trend is still valid today it does tell a sad story. The left hand side of the curve is linear starting with zero income. That means there is no floor supporting the second and third deciles. There is always going to be some small group that can't or won't obtain an income but the second and third deciles are living on less than half the median income, that means that a third of the population will feel really poor. It's not like those earning the median income feel all the well off. I think the shape of the curve has changed some since then with wages at the low end rising so the curve is more flat in the middle.

TEK