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Evolutionary Dynamics of Social Inequality and Coincidence of Gini and Kolkata indices under Unrestricted Competition
Physics and Society · Submitted 15 Nov 2021
abstract compiled · 2026-09-23 · no language-model review
The authors' main claim It is further showed that these two indices become equal and stabilize at a value (at $g = k \simeq 0.87$) under unrestricted competitions.
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The abstract, sentence by sentence
Social inequalities are ubiquitous and here we show that the values of the Gini ($g$) and Kolkata ($k$) indices, two generic inequality indices, approach each other (starting from $g = 0$ and $k = 0.5$ for equality) as the competitions grow in various social institutions like markets, universities, elections, etc. It is further showed that these two indices become equal and stabilize at a value (at $g = k \simeq 0.87$) under unrestricted competitions. We propose to view this coincidence of inequality indices as a generalized version of the (more than a) century old 80-20 law of Pareto. Furthermore, the coincidence of the inequality indices noted here is very similar to the ones seen before for self-organized critical (SOC) systems. The observations here, therefore, stand as a quantitative support towards viewing interacting socio-economic systems in the framework of SOC, an idea conjectured for years.
background contribution method result interpretation main claim
| # | sentence | role | the authors' own work | states the main conclusion | strength |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| s0 | Social inequalities are ubiquitous and here we show that the values of the Gini ($g$) and Kolkata ($k$) indices, two generic inequality indices, approach each other (starting from $g = 0$ and $k = 0.5$ for equality) as the competitions grow in various social institutions like markets, universities, elections, etc. | result 0.96 | 0.87 | 0.28 | asserted 1.00 |
| s1 | It is further showed that these two indices become equal and stabilize at a value (at $g = k \simeq 0.87$) under unrestricted competitions. | result 1.00 | 0.90 | 0.58 | asserted 1.00 |
| s2 | We propose to view this coincidence of inequality indices as a generalized version of the (more than a) century old 80-20 law of Pareto. | interpretation 1.00 | 0.35 | 0.24 | hedged possibility 0.38 |
| s3 | Furthermore, the coincidence of the inequality indices noted here is very similar to the ones seen before for self-organized critical (SOC) systems. | interpretation 0.84 | 0.39 | 0.07 | asserted 0.95 |
| s4 | The observations here, therefore, stand as a quantitative support towards viewing interacting socio-economic systems in the framework of SOC, an idea conjectured for years. | interpretation 1.00 | 0.59 | 0.36 | asserted 0.69 |
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The paper
Original abstract
Social inequalities are ubiquitous and here we show that the values of the Gini ($g$) and Kolkata ($k$) indices, two generic inequality indices, approach each other (starting from $g = 0$ and $k = 0.5$ for equality) as the competitions grow in various social institutions like markets, universities, elections, etc. It is further showed that these two indices become equal and stabilize at a value (at $g = k \simeq 0.87$) under unrestricted competitions. We propose to view this coincidence of inequality indices as a generalized version of the (more than a) century old 80-20 law of Pareto. Furthermore, the coincidence of the inequality indices noted here is very similar to the ones seen before for self-organized critical (SOC) systems. The observations here, therefore, stand as a quantitative support towards viewing interacting socio-economic systems in the framework of SOC, an idea conjectured for years.
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How the literature uses it
3 arXiv papers cite this in 10 sentences
Papers citing it · 6 sentences without a confident label
Compares with it 2 papers
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A comparison with similar observations in socio-economic data (see e.g., [ref] ) suggests similar emergent inequality as a result of unconstrained competitions in the social dynamics.
Near universal values of social inequality indices in self-organized critical models · Discussions and conclusions · 0.99
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This result (initial slope $3/8≈0.37$) was also already observed in [ref] from analysis of various datasets, including income distributions of different countries, citation distributions of individual scientists, movie income distribution, votes share distribution among the candidates, etc.
Variation of Gini and Kolkata Indices with Saving Propensity in the Kinetic Exchange Model of Wealth Distribution: An Analytical Study · Summary and Discussion · 0.87
Cites it as support 1 paper
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It has been recently noted that the inequality indices, $k$ and $g$ in particular, are remarkably stable (near-universal) quantities near self-organized [ref] as well as tuned [ref] critical points for a broad class of threshold activated dynamics viz., sand-pile models, driven interfaces and fiber bundles.
Prediction of imminent failure using supervised learning in fiber bundle model · Feature importance and its reasons · 0.97
Cites it as background 1 paper
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In socio-economic systems with unrestricted competitions, emergence of inequality in resource distributions is observed very often [ref] .
Near universal values of social inequality indices in self-organized critical models · Discussions and conclusions · 0.82
What it cites
Uses data or values from 1 paper
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We analyze here the income data (both for income and income tax), in particular the IRS (USA) data [ref] for the period 1983 to 2018, income from movie productions data both for Hollywood (USA [ref] ) and Bollywood (India [ref] ) films produced during the period 2011-2019, Google Scholar citations data for papers written by scientists who won Fields Medal (mathematics), Boltzmann Medal (statistical physics), Dirac Medal (physics), and John von Neumann Medal (social science) in different years having individual Google Scholar pages with `verified email' address, and for vote share data of the candidates competing in parliament elections in India for the last two election years (2014 and 2019 [ref] ).
Physics-inspired analysis of the two-class income distribution in the USA in 1983-2018 · Introduction · 1.00
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