Pen's parade

Pen's Parade or The Income Parade is a concept described in a 1971 book published by Dutch economist Jan Pen describing income distribution.

The parade is defined as a succession of every person in the economy, with their height proportional to their income, and ordered from lowest to greatest.

The Pen's description of what the spectator would see is a parade of dwarves, and then some unbelievable giants at the very end.

[1] The original context of the parade is the United Kingdom, and the duration is one hour.

The parade is used by economists as a graphical representation of income inequality because it is a form of quantile function and it is considered useful when comparing two different areas or periods.