Social inequality is on the rise in nearly every country in every part of the world today. This would be troubling in itself. Rising inequality, however, is not just a moral danger -- it is a mortal danger as well. In recent decades public health researchers have traced pathways connecting social inequalities and individual health. This "new" public health focuses on how social, economic, and political factors influence health through their effects on our individual behaviors, the social groups we belong to, the character of our relationships to others, and the characteristics of the societies in which we live.

This monograph from sociologist Salvatore Babones examines the global distribution of both national and individual incomes from a world-systems perspective. The oft-posited tri-partite division of the world-economy into core, semiperipheral, and peripheral countries is confirmed, as is the Arrighi-Drangel conjecture that at the individual level the global income distribution is bimodal. It is then shown how world-system structure is not purely descriptive, but is an important conditioning factor in modeling economic growth.

In this informative and exciting volume, editors Christopher Chase-Dunn and Salvatore J. Babones bring together accomplished senior sociologists and outstanding younger scholars with a mix of interests, expertise, and methodologies to offer an introduction to ways of studying and understanding global social change. The contributors employ historical and comparative social science to examine the development of institutions of global governance, the rise and fall of hegemonic core states, transnational social movements, and global environmental challenges.