Given the prevalence of the pandemic in the news in recent months, much of the information has not received the attention it would otherwise have received. This is the case with the publication a few months ago of the new purchasing power parity figures used to compare real living standards between countries in preference to official exchange rates which ignore that one hundred euros changed into rupees or cedis acquire more goods and services in Delhi or Accra than in Paris.

Every six years, the International Price Comparison Program (ICP) undertakes a gigantic survey of prices in all the countries of the world to establish these parities. The latest update concerns the year 2017 and rectifies the figures used until a few months ago on the basis of 2011 parities. While purchasing power parities have changed little in six years, on the other hand Changes observed in the international structure of real incomes over a relatively short and uneven period are striking.

First, the rebalancing between the rich countries and the rest of the world continues, but the balance now tips in favor of the latter. By losing just over 4 points of real world income, advanced economies are now a minority, while emerging and developing countries control nearly 52% of world product.

The second striking fact is of course the leading role of China in this rebalancing. Even if the Chinese authorities remain discreet on this subject, and despite the downward correction mentioned above, it is confirmed that, by gaining 3 points of world production, China was on a par with the United States in 2017, and certainly exceeds them since.

A third important observation is precisely the fact that, outside of China, the developing world is progressing more slowly. Its share in world income only increases by 1 percentage point, roughly equal to the increase in its demographic weight. The average income of these countries has therefore grown at a rate close to that of the rest of the world, which has also enabled extreme poverty to decrease there at a sustained rate, as shown by the figures of the World Bank. - not yet revised in view of the new parities.

A final salient feature of the evolution of the global economy is the major repositioning that is taking place among the rich countries. The European Union, which since its last enlargement was the largest economy in the world, today weighs about the same as the United States, and, of course, significantly less since the exit of the United Kingdom.

The result of this changing landscape of the international structure of living standards is that inequality between countries has continued to decline rapidly since the reversal of the trend observed in the early 1990s. This is easily verified from aggregate measures of inequality, even if this does not exclude that the relative gap in income between the richest countries and certain poor countries with a small population could have increased. Moreover, the fall in inequality between countries seems strong enough not to have to be called into question by taking into account the variation in inequality within countries.

How will the pandemic affect this development? There was little doubt a few weeks ago that advanced economies would be more affected than the developing world by the end of 2021. The current upsurge in contamination and longer expected time frames for full recovery suggest a a fortiori that the decline in international inequality should continue for some time to come.