Hi,
I need to select one variable to measure income inequality for all countries. I found data for Gini index. However, data is not available for all the years, from 1980 to 2015 and there are many missing values. Anyone aware of any other index to measure the same with data availability for the period from 1980 to 2015.
Thank you
Well, the best sources for comparative international data are the World Bank (data.worldbank.org) and UN Data (data.un.org). The Google Public Data Explorer (https://www.google.com/publicdata) has some data from Eurostat and OECD. Yes, its true there is missing data and to a certain extent you can interpolate, but that still leaves a great deal of missing data. I doubt that you will find anything more comprehensive. There is an inequality adjusted Human Development Index, but not for your time period. I'll link to some articles about other inequality measures--but You probably won't have the raw data.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/09/22/the-many-ways-to-measure-economic-inequality/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2652960/
What is the philosophy and ethics of your environment. Gini coefficent only shows the degree of inequality. The acceptable degree of inequality is culture dependent and it is not easy to generalize on ethics.
Daniel Maierieka the idea of "one size fits all" is not sustainable
Usually, I am using Gini coefficient published by Eurostat, but it is available only for EU countries. When I wanted to cover a longer period I have used the data set mentioned by Daniel Meierrieks. The thing is it applies the monte carlo tool to estimate the missing data. However, it may be the most appropriate Gini dataset (Standardized World Income Inequality Database, based on LIS) if you want to cover such a period, but is important to adjust your interpretation depending on the methodology used.