The Examination of Appearance of Income Inequality in Scientific Databases with Content Analysis

Our modern world society applies widely – but not nearly in generally – the principle that all human beings are equal, or at least should be equal. There used to be and still are societies heavily burdened by inequalities, while others realized various different approaches to equality during the course of history. Almost all societies have become stratified by today. Goal of our study is to examine in online scientific full-text databases – Science Direct and Web of Science – when and how key phrases and keywords like income distribution, equality, income inequality, poverty and deprivation appear in literature, as well as the understanding of the emphasis on migration and their changes through the course of scientific history. Furthermore, we attempt to compare the results of the examination carried out in both databases. Scientific papers provide an overview in various sections about the problems of societal stratification, and the equality-inequality, balance-imbalance questions take almost daily roles in various studies. Extreme poverty is an often-used expression today. Our hypothesis seems to be valid in light of the emergence of income inequality as a major topic next to income distribution – as the governmental action for social equalization. As it has been referred to, studies concerning income inequalities have brought along with them various forms of measuring income differences. Despite its advantages, the Gini-index, developed by Corrado Gini deserves special attention, since it has been popularly used to quantify income differences and has become prevalent in the past 15 years. Most recently, the Hungarian-developed Éltető-Frigyes index has also earned recognition in scientific circles. Our article summarizes the most important findings from our perspective while introducing the major changes in scientific research since the 1970s. We believe that the studies allow for greater advances in solving global problems for a new and fairer global economic order, as they focus on this important topic in ever more investigations