A bleak record: Turkey comes second in OECD income inequality list

The gap between rich and poor in Turkey is at the second highest level among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries, a report by the organization showed on Tuesday.

The OECD report, titled “Does income inequality hurt economic growth?” revealed that income inequality has now hit its highest level in 30 years in OECD countries. “Today, the richest 10 percent of the population in the OECD area earn 9.5 times more than the poorest 10 percent,” Tuesday's OECD report read.

According to the Gini coefficient, a broader measure of inequality ranging from zero, where everybody has an identical income, to 1, where all income goes to only one person, Turkey ranks second after Mexico in income disparity. The report adds that income inequality has slightly fallen only in Greece and Turkey.

Underlining that when income inequality rises, economic growth falls, the OECD report estimates that rising income inequality has knocked more than 4.6 percentage points off economic growth between 1985 and 2010. This figure was 10 percent for Mexico and 9 percent for New Zealand.

On the topic of remedies for the income gap, the OECD says redistribution efforts should focus on families with children and youth, and should promote the development of skills and learning throughout people's lives.

Turkey has a bleak record regarding income distribution. A Credit Suisse report had separately shown in October that the gap between Turkey's rich and poor continues to expand, with 10 percent of the population holding 78 percent of the total wealth in the country. The same report had said that Turkey was home to the third-fastest deterioration of income equality, after Egypt and Hong Kong, between 2000 and 2014.