This study empirically investigates the impact of core labour standards on income
inequality for a range of 90 countries from 1990–2000. A synthetic index of labour standards is
computed by means of aMultiple Correspondence Analysis and no significant correlation is found
with the Gini index. One of the reasons pointed out is that the effective implementation of core
labour standards depends on the quality of the country's political and legal systems. Using
instrumental variables in a TSLS model, we found an inverse ‘U' shaped curve between the new
endogenous index of core labour standards and income inequality.