Ahead of the report launch, WID.world announced its first conference for December 14–15, 2017. This helped organize an international research community around shared methods and new data releases, which became the backbone for later World Inequality Reports and dataset expansions.
The World Inequality Lab released the World Inequality Report 2018 at the first WID.world Conference in Paris. The report set out a shared approach for comparing income and wealth inequality across countries using harmonized data, helping make “global wealth inequality” a more measurable and trackable topic for researchers and policymakers.
The 2019 activity report (posted in 2020) documented continued expansion of WID data coverage and the release of public-facing tools such as the Income comparator and Inequality Transparency Index. These steps helped translate complex inequality statistics into formats that are easier to compare and communicate.
In its 2020 activity report (published in 2021), the World Inequality Lab described expanding global inequality data coverage to 173 countries, representing about 97% of the world population. It also highlighted updated methodological guidance (DINA guidelines), showing how the project aimed to standardize inequality measurement across places and time.
The World Inequality Lab released the World Inequality Report 2022 with updated global evidence on income, wealth, gender, and ecological inequality (as of 2021). The release reinforced the report series as a regular reference point and linked the findings directly to the open data and methods available through the World Inequality Database.
The World Inequality Lab’s 2022 activity report (published in 2023) framed 2022 as a milestone year because it followed the release and dissemination of the World Inequality Report 2022. It also emphasized ongoing work on inequality measurement and public engagement, signaling that report releases were tied to continuing dataset and methodology work.
In its 2024 activity report (published in 2025), the World Inequality Lab reported expanding the World Inequality Database to include new data on foreign income, foreign wealth, trade balance, public revenue, and public spending. These additions matter because cross-border assets, taxes, and public budgets can strongly shape how wealth is held and how inequality evolves.
WID.world announced that the World Inequality Lab would release the World Inequality Report 2026 on December 10, 2025. The announcement also signaled a broader policy context, highlighting growing attention to global inequality within G20 discussions and debates about international coordination on inequality measurement and policy.
The World Inequality Report 2026 was made available through its companion site, continuing the report series that began with the 2018 edition. The report format—chapters plus downloadable materials—aimed to make headline findings and underlying evidence accessible for teaching, research, and policy analysis.
The OECD’s Income Distribution Database (IDD) documented regular updates, including a dated update note in late 2025. This illustrates how global inequality tracking often depends on multiple datasets (not just WID), with different country coverage and update schedules that affect what can be compared across time.
The World Inequality Lab’s 2025 activity report (published in 2026) described continued expansion of the World Inequality Database using Distributional National Accounts (DINA) methods and a large international network of researchers. It also pointed to rising political salience of inequality—especially at the G20 level—as an outcome of years of data building and recurring report releases.
By the mid-2020s, WID.world described itself as an open-access source for global inequality data, combining national accounts, surveys, and fiscal (tax) data. Taken together, the report releases (2018, 2022, 2026) and repeated database expansions show a shift from one-off inequality studies toward a more continuous system for updating global wealth inequality evidence.
World Inequality Report releases and global dataset updates (2017–2024)