{"id":130584,"date":"2019-04-08T12:01:12","date_gmt":"2019-04-08T11:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=130584"},"modified":"2019-04-02T14:24:52","modified_gmt":"2019-04-02T13:24:52","slug":"how-bad-is-global-inequality-really","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/04\/how-bad-is-global-inequality-really\/","title":{"rendered":"How Bad Is Global Inequality, Really?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

The Parais\u00f3polis favela borders the affluent district of Morumbi in S\u00e3o Paulo, Brazil.
Photo credit: Tuca Vieira.<\/p><\/div>\n

3 Mar 2019 – <\/em>Most everyone who\u2019s interested in global inequality has come across the famous elephant graph, originally developed by Branko Milanovic and Christoph Lakner using World Bank data (see below). The graph charts the change in income that the world\u2019s population have experienced over time, from the very poorest to the richest 1%.<\/p>\n

We can update the elephant graph using the latest data from the World Inequality Database, which covers the whole period from 1980 to 2016 using a method called \u201cdistributive national accounts\u201d. Here\u2019s what it looks like in real dollars (MER), developed in collaboration with Huzaifa Zoomkawala:<\/p>\n

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The elephant graph has been used by some to argue that neoliberal globalization has caused inequality to decline since 1980. After all, it would appear that the biggest gains have gone to the poorest 60% of the world\u2019s population, whose incomes have grown two or three times more than those of the richest 40%.<\/p>\n

But this impression can be misleading. It\u2019s important to recognize that the elephant graph shows\u00a0relative\u00a0<\/em>gains, with respect to each group\u2019s baseline in 1980. So the poorest 10-20th percentile gained 82% over this period. That sounds like a lot, on the face of it. But remember that they started from a very low base. For people earning $2.40 per day in 1980, their incomes grew to no more than $4.36 per day\u2026\u00a0over a period of 36 years<\/em>. So, about 5 cents per year.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not much to celebrate, particularly when these gains don\u2019t come anywhere close to lifting people out of poverty. Remember, the poorest 60% \u2013 the ones depicted as the \u201cwinners\u201d in the elephant graph \u2013 continue to live under the poverty line of $7.40 per day (2011 PPP).<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the global rich may have seen their incomes increase by a smaller proportion, but because they started from a much higher base their absolute gains have been far greater.<\/p>\n

What we need, then, is to render the elephant graph in absolute terms, to see who\u2019s benefited most from the distribution of new income around the world. Here\u2019s what it looks like:<\/p>\n

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Suddenly the story changes. It becomes clear that it\u2019s the richest 1% who have gained the most \u2013 by far. The incomes of the world\u2019s poor have barely budged by comparison.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not an elephant graph anymore. It\u2019s a boomerang. This seems a fitting image, given how income has an uncanny way of circling back to those who already have it. Or we could call it a scythe, which nicely captures how the rich are harvesting the world\u2019s abundance for themselves.<\/p>\n

Things get even more extreme once we start separating out top incomes, which is what the World Inequality Database allows us to do. Click\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0to see how the \u201celephant\u201d shape disintegrates and the scythe becomes even sharper. Here\u2019s a table showing how each group has fared from 1980 to 2016:<\/p>\n

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The results are staggering, really. For the poorest 60% of humanity, the average person saw their annual income increase by only about $1,200\u2026\u00a0over 36 years<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, those in the 70-80th percentile, the \u201closers\u201d according to the elephant graph, are revealed to have gained more than twice that amount. Those in the 80-90th percentile (also represented as losers in the elephant graph) gained four times more. And the richest 1% got\u00a0one<\/em>\u00a0hundred times<\/em>\u00a0more.<\/p>\n

As for the top incomes\u2026 well, they have grown by what can only be described as an obscene amount, with millionaires doubling or tripling their annual incomes, gaining some\u00a014,000 times<\/em>\u00a0more\u00a0<\/em>than the average person in the poorest 60% of the world\u2019s population.<\/p>\n

All of this makes it clear who the real beneficiaries of globalization have been. And suddenly it seems a bit absurd to be touting as \u201cprogress\u201d the pennies that have trickled down to the poorest when the overwhelming majority of new income since 1980 has been captured at the top.<\/p>\n

_________________________________________________________<\/p>\n

Jason Hickel<\/em> is an anthropologist at the London School of Economics. He specializes in globalization, finance, democracy, violence, and ritual, and is the author of <\/em>Democracy as Death: The Moral Order of Anti-Liberal Politics in South Africa and<\/em> The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 jasonhickel.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

3 Mar 2019 – Most everyone who\u2019s interested in global inequality has come across the famous elephant graph, originally developed by Branko Milanovic and Christoph Lakner using World Bank data (see below). The graph charts the change in income that the world\u2019s population have experienced over time, from the very poorest to the richest 1%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":130585,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-130584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-capitalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}