Financial Tribune - The Gini index for Iran's urban areas increased by 1.69% last year to reach 0.3793, while rural areas saw their Gini index rise by 5.86% to hit 0.3559 for the same period

Iran�s Gini index was at 0.3981 in the last fiscal year (March 2017-18), indicating a 2.08% rise compared with the year before (March 2016-17), Fars News Agency cited a report by Plan and Budget Organization as saying.

The Gini index for Iran's urban areas increased by 1.69% last year to reach 0.3793, while rural areas saw their Gini index rise by 5.86% to hit 0.3559 for the same period.

As per the Sixth Five-Year Development Plan (2017-22), the Gini index is stipulated to drop to 0.34 by the end of the fiscal 2021-22.

The Gini coefficient ranks the income inequality in a place on a scale from zero�no inequality�to 1, maximum inequality. In other words, the closer the number is to 1, the more wealth is concentrated in the hands of fewer people, thus the bigger income disparity.

One way of measuring inequality is the Gini coefficient, developed by Italian statistician Corrado Gini in 1912. It aggregates the gaps between people�s incomes into a single measure.