The rise in inequality over the past decades was driven by a greater dispersion of market incomes; taxes and especially transfers somewhat slowed the rise in inequality. However, this overall trend conceals substantial differences between trends of individual countries. Between the beginning of the me-series in the 1980s and the latest available data point, inequality of disposable incomes actually declined in Denmark, France, Ireland and Switzerland: in other words, these countries have become more equal at a me when inequality grew in most other countries. At the other extreme, in the United Kingdom the Gini coefficient surged from 0.270 (1979) to 0.345 (2004), and in the United States it rose from 0.301 (1979) to 0.372 (2004). In a ma er of two decades, these two countries thus experienced a considerable widening of income disparities.