The Gini Coefficient measures the income equality between citizens of a nation. Taken from Wikipedia:

"The Gini coefficient is a measure of the inequality of a distribution, a value of 0 expressing total equality and a value of 1 maximal inequality. It has found application in the study of inequalities in disciplines as diverse as sociology, economics, health science, ecology, chemistry, engineering and agriculture.

It is commonly used as a measure of inequality of income or wealth. Worldwide, Gini coefficients for income range from approximately 0.23 (Sweden) to 0.70 (Namibia) although not every country has been assessed."

Have a look at the map.



The lower the Gini Coefficient, the less of a gap there is between the rich and the poor.

You will see that industrialized nations with a relatively low Gini Coefficient include:

Canada
France
Spain
Italy
Germany
England
Ireland
Sweden
Finland
Norway
Australia

These nations are consistently ranked as countries with the highest standard of living.

It's surprising to point out that the USA has a relatively high Gini Coefficient. The USA's Gini Coefficient is comparable to nations such as:

China
Jamaica
Cameroon
Iran
Rwanda
Cambodia
Kenya
Russia
Venezuela
Morocco
Sri Lanka

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ec...ome-gini-index

Now what this means is that despite the US being a rich country, a greater proportion of that wealth is in the hands of a few ultra rich people than it would be in a nation with a lower Gini Coefficient.

Having a large income gap between the rich and the poor segregates society, which can be witnessed in the United States where ghettos that exist would simply not be found nearly as frequently as in nations with lower Gini Coefficients. This is perhaps why we see more pictures like this in the US than we do in the other civilized nations around the world:







Detroit:




So I'll let you all draw your own conclusions. Myself, I'd prefer to live in a nation where all my neighbours are well off so that I don't have to live in/with situations depicted in the above pictures.