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การประชุมวิชาการ
สถาบันพระปกเกล้า ครั้งที่ 21 7
ลดช่องว่างความเหลื่อมล้ำ สร้างคุณภาพประชาธิปไตย

Figure 1 shows that the levels of post-tax and transfers income inequality
in selected East Asian countries for the three periods: 1990 (or earliest)-1999,

2000-2009, and 2010-2015 (or latest). We use the Gini coefficient from the
Standardized World Income Inequality Database (SWIID) assembled by Solt

(2016). The levels of income inequality have risen, at varying degrees, across
much of the region. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Mongolia, and
Singapore displayed an upward trend. The Philippines, Malaysia, and Thailand

exhibited a downward trend. Of the six countries with an upward trend,
Indonesia suffered the sharpest rise. Of the three countries with a downward

trend, Thailand experienced the biggest decrease. It is notable that levels of
income inequality have risen or remained high (considering Gini coefficient of
35.0 to be the threshold for high inequality) in new democracies, suggesting

that the rise of democracy has not led to more redistribution, contrary to the
expectation of the Meltzer-Richard model that redistribution is greater in

democracy than in dictatorship (Meltzer and Richard 1981). In fact, comparing
the pre-tax and transfers Gini coefficient with the post-tax and transfers Gini
coefficient, the redistributive role of democracy appears to be limited in East

Asian democracies except for Japan (Cho and Kwon 2018). What attracts
attention here is that levels of income inequality have risen and/or remained

3
high amid democratic transition or authoritarian persistence across the region.

3 Of the six countries in the region transitioning to electoral democracy during the 1980-
2000, Haggard and Kaufman (2012) considered Mongolia to be a democratic transition with
high level of inequality, as measured by Gini coefficient (form the University of Texas Inequality เอกสารประกอบการอภิปรายร่วมระหว่างผู้แทนจากต่างประเทศ
Project’s dataset); Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand to be democratic transitions with
medium level of inequality; South Korea and Taiwan to be democratic transitions with low level
of inequality. They classified all the countries except Taiwan as democratic transitions with
distributive conflicts between the elites and the masses.