Humanity faces many fundamental questions that shape its present and future. For example, climate change, global inequality, technological ethics, social justice, etc.
In your view, which question is more critical, and how do you suggest it should be addressed?
Thank you for UN report. Here is my two cents:
Global inequality is a complex issue that requires multi-faceted solutions. Practically all countries try to address it but have yet to succeed. Here are the underlying issues:
1. Quality of education. In most countries, especially developing countries, what they teach at schools differs from the skills students need to compete in the global economy. All studies show that increasing access to quality education and skill development can empower individuals to improve their economic prospects and participate in the worldwide job market. This includes investments in primary, secondary, and tertiary education, vocational training, and lifelong learning opportunities.
2. Distribution of Income: In developing countries, inadequate resources for health, education, sanitation, and investment in the poorest citizens drive extreme inequality. Therefore, implementing poverty alleviation measures such as social safety nets, income redistribution, and progressive taxation can help reduce income disparities within societies. This includes ensuring fair wages, enforcing labor rights, and providing necessities like healthcare, housing, and food security.
3. Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment: Promoting gender equality and empowering women economically, socially, and politically is crucial for reducing global inequality. This involves addressing gender-based discrimination, ensuring equal access to education and employment, and promoting women’s rights and representation.
4. Enhancing Global Trade and Economic Integration: Creating fair trade policies, reducing trade barriers, and promoting inclusive economic growth can help uplift disadvantaged communities and countries. This includes supporting micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), enabling access to global markets, and fostering sustainable trade practices.
5. Strengthening Social Protection Systems: Governments should establish and enforce a national living wage. Corporations should also prioritize a living wage for their workers and suppliers, buyers, and others with whom they do business. Low and unlivable wages are a result of worker dis empowerment and concentration of wealth at the top — hallmarks of unequal societies. As human beings with basic needs, all workers should earn enough to support themselves and their families. Governments and corporations should be responsible for protecting the right to a living wage, and corporations should commit to responsible behavior that respects the dignity of all workers. Therefore, the solution is building robust social protection systems to provide a safety net for vulnerable populations, including the poor, elderly, disabled, and marginalized groups. This includes implementing universal healthcare, social insurance, pension schemes, and social assistance programs.
6. Addressing Corruption and Improving Governance: Tackling corruption and improving governance are essential for reducing inequality. Transparent and accountable institutions, effective public policies, and anti-corruption measures can promote equitable distribution of resources and opportunities.
The following is a report by United Nations on inequality.
Inequality – Bridging the Divide
Today, wherever people live, they don’t have to look far to confront inequalities. Inequality in its various forms is an issue that will define our time. Confronting inequalities has moved to the forefront of many global policy debates as a consensus has emerged that all should enjoy equal access to opportunity. “Leave no one behind” serves as the rallying cry of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Overall, since the 1990s total global inequality (inequality across all individuals in the world) declined for the first time since the 1820s. Reinforcing this trend, we have mostly seen income inequality between countries decline. Yet income inequality within countries has risen, this is the form of inequality people feel on a daily basis.
Inequalities are not only driven and measured by income, but are determined by other factors – gender, age, origin, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, class, and religion. These factors determine inequalities of opportunity which continue to persist, within and between countries. In some parts of the world, these divides are becoming more pronounced. Meanwhile, gaps in newer areas, such as access to online and mobile technologies, are emerging. The result is a complex mix of internal and external challenges that will continue to grow over the next twenty-five years.
Income inequality between countries has improved.
For the most part we have seen income inequality between countries improve in the last 25 years, meaning average incomes in developing countries are increasing at a faster rate. This can be accredited to strong economic growth in China and other emerging economies in Asia. However, the gap between countries is still considerable. For example, the average income of people living in North America is 16 times higher than that of people in sub-Saharan Africa.
Income inequality within countries is getting worse.
Income inequality between countries has improved, yet income inequality within countries has become worse. Today, 71 percent of the world’s population live in countries where inequality has grown. This is especially important because inequalities within countries are the inequalities people feel day to day, month to month, year to year. This is how people stack up and compare themselves with their neighbors, family members, and society. Since 1990, income inequality has increased in most developed countries and in some middle-income countries, including China and India.
While inequality has gone up in the majority of countries over the past three decades, it has fallen in a few. In Latin America and the Caribbean, there has been a considerable decline, although levels remain high. In Africa and Asia, trends have been more varied, with greater similarities between emerging economies or landlocked developing countries, and between rural or urban areas, than within regions.
The very top
Despite progress in some regions, income and wealth are increasingly concentrated at the top. An Oxfam report shows that in the 10 years since the financial crisis, the number of billionaires has nearly doubled, and the fortunes of the world’s super-rich have reached record levels. In 2018, the 26 richest people in the world held as much wealth as half of the global population (the 3.8 billion poorest people), down from 43 people the year before.
This matters because rapid rises in incomes at the top are driving and exacerbating within country income inequality. From 1990 to 2015, the share of income going to the top 1 percent of the global population increased in 46 out of 57 countries with data. Meanwhile, in more than half of the 92 countries with data, the bottom 40 percent receive less than 25 per cent of overall income.
In your society, who you are matters.
There are also inequalities within communities – and even families. Up to 30 percent of income inequality is due to inequality within households. When it comes to women and girls, progress is uneven. In many ways gender inequalities have been shrinking – the gender pay gap, for instance, has decreased for some women in certain occupations over the last couple of decades. However, at the same time, women and girls put in 12.5 billion hours of unpaid care work each and every day — a contribution to the global economy of at least $10.8 trillion a year, more than three times the size of the global tech industry.
Groups such as indigenous peoples, migrants and refugees, and ethnic and other minorities continue to suffer from discrimination, marginalization, and lack of legal rights. This is pervasive across developing and developed countries alike and is not tied to income. For example, social protection has been significantly extended globally, yet persons with disabilities are up to five times more likely than average to incur catastrophic health expenditures. Additionally, a UNDESA report found that at the current rate of progress observed from the 1990s to the 2010s, it will take more than four decades to close the stunting gap between ethnic groups.
More than income
The measurements and impacts of inequality go far beyond income and purchasing power. Inequalities of opportunity affect a person’s life expectancy and access to basic services such as healthcare, education, water, and sanitation. They can curtail a person’s human rights, through discrimination, abuse and lack of access to justice. In 2018, we saw the world’s 12th consecutive year of decline in global freedom, with 71 countries suffering net declines in political and civil liberties.
High levels of inequality of opportunity discourage skills accumulation, choke economic and social mobility, and human development and, consequently, depress economic growth. It also entrenches uncertainty, vulnerability and insecurity, undermines trust in institutions and government, increases social discord and tensions and trigger violence and conflicts. There are growing evidence that high level of income and wealth inequality is propelling the rise of nativism and extreme forms of nationalism.
In addition, the evolution of issues such as climate change, technology, and urbanization raise urgent policy challenges. For example, climate change is exacerbating environmental degradation, increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, and by no means impacting people uniformly. If climate change continues unaddressed it will increase inequality within countries and may even reverse current progress in reducing inequality between countries. Meanwhile, technology can be a great equalizer – by enhancing connectivity, financial inclusion, access to trade and public services, for instance – but those yet to be connected may experience further marginalization as a result, especially as progress is slowing, even reversing, among some constituencies. With a global trend toward urbanization, cities are becoming a growing site for inequalities. They find high levels of wealth and modern infrastructure coexist with pockets of severe deprivation, often side by side. This makes gaping and increasing levels of inequality all the more glaring within cities.
Tackling inequalities
Rising inequality is not the only way forward. For example, between 2010 and 2016, the incomes of the poorest 40 percent of the population grew faster than those of the entire population in 60 out of 94 countries with data. This shows inequality is neither inevitable nor irreversible.
There is a clear need to pursue inclusive, equitable, and sustainable growth, ensuring a balance among economic, social, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. However, inequality takes many forms and varies significantly across countries. While Goal 10 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 10) and its targets provide a framework, the fight against inequality must be rooted in country-contexts, economic imperatives, and political realities. There is no scope for a one-size fits all approach, and national policies and institutions matter.
Source: https://www.un.org/en/un75/inequality-bridging-divide