Economic inequality
Economic inequality is an
Historically, there has been a long-run trend towards greater economic inequality over time. The exceptions to this during the modern era are the declines in economic inequality during the two World Wars and amid the creation of modern
Research has generally linked economic inequality to political and social instability, including revolution, democratic breakdown and civil conflict.[6][11][12][13] Research suggests that greater inequality hinders economic growth and macroeconomic stability, and that land and human capital inequality reduce growth more than inequality of income.[6][14] Inequality is at the center stage of economic policy debate across the globe, as government tax and spending policies have significant effects on income distribution.[6] In advanced economies, taxes and transfers decrease income inequality by one-third, with most of this being achieved via public social spending (such as pensions and family benefits).[6] While the "optimum" amount of economic inequality is widely debated, there is a near-universal belief that complete economic equality (Gini of zero) would be undesirable and unachieveable.[15]: 1
Measurements
In 1820, the ratio between the income of the top and bottom 20 percent of the world's population was three to one. By 1991, it was eighty-six to one.
- Changes in the structure of households can play an important role. Single-headed households in OECD countries have risen from an average of 15% in the late 1980s to 20% in the mid-2000s, resulting in higher inequality.
- Assortative mating refers to the phenomenon of people marrying people with similar background, for example doctors marrying other doctors rather than nurses. OECD found out that 40% of couples where both partners work belonged to the same or neighbouring earnings deciles compared with 33% some 20 years before.[18]
- In the bottom percentiles, number of hours worked has decreased.[18]
- The main reason for increasing inequality seems to be the difference between the demand for and supply of skills.[18]
The study made the following conclusions about the level of economic inequality:
- Income inequality in OECD countries is at its highest level for the past half century. The ratio between the bottom 10% and the top 10% has increased from 1:7 to 1:9 in 25 years.[18]
- There are tentative signs of a possible convergence of inequality levels towards a common and higher average level across OECD countries.[18]
- With very few exceptions (France, Japan, and Spain), the wages of the 10% best-paid workers have risen relative to those of the 10% lowest paid.[18]
A 2011 OECD study investigated economic inequality in
A study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research at
Oxfam's 2021 report on global inequality said that the COVID-19 pandemic has increased economic inequality substantially; the wealthiest people across the globe were impacted the least by the pandemic and their fortunes recovered quickest, with billionaires seeing their wealth increase by $3.9 trillion, while at the same time the number of people living on less than $5.50 a day likely increased by 500 million.[21] According to economist Joseph Stiglitz, the pandemic's "most significant outcome" will be rising economic inequality in the United States and between the developed and developing world.[22] The 2024 Oxfam report found a significant increase in inequality as roughly five billion people have become poorer while at the same time the fortunes of the five richest individuals have doubled. The report warns that current trends are paving the way for the world's first trillionaire within a decade and global poverty eradication being postponed for 229 years.[23]
According to
The existing data and estimates suggest a large increase in international (and more generally inter-macroregional) components between 1820 and 1960. It might have slightly decreased since that time at the expense of increasing inequality within countries.[37] The United Nations Development Programme in 2014 asserted that greater investments in social security, jobs, and laws that protect vulnerable populations are necessary to prevent widening income inequality.[38]
There is a significant difference in the measured wealth distribution and the public's understanding of wealth distribution. Michael Norton of the Harvard Business School and Dan Ariely of the Department of Psychology at Duke University found this to be true in their research conducted in 2011. The actual wealth going to the top quintile in 2011 was around 84%, whereas the average amount of wealth that the general public estimated to go to the top quintile was around 58%.[39]
According to a 2020 study, global earnings inequality has decreased substantially since 1970. During the 2000s and 2010s, the share of earnings by the world's poorest half doubled.[40] Two researchers claim that global income inequality is decreasing due to strong economic growth in developing countries.[41] According to a January 2020 report by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, economic inequality between states had declined, but intrastate inequality has increased for 70% of the world population over the period 1990–2015.[42] In 2015, the OECD reported in 2015 that income inequality is higher than it has ever been within OECD member nations and is at increased levels in many emerging economies.[43] According to a June 2015 report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF):
Widening income inequality is the defining challenge of our time. In advanced economies, the gap between the rich and poor is at its highest level in decades. Inequality trends have been more mixed in emerging markets and developing countries (EMDCs), with some countries experiencing declining inequality, but pervasive inequities in access to education, health care, and finance remain.[44]
In October 2017, the IMF warned that inequality within nations, in spite of global inequality falling in recent decades, has risen so sharply that it threatens economic growth and could result in further
The 2022
Wealth distribution within individual countries
The wealth is calculated by various factors, for instance: liabilities, debts, exchange rates and their expected development, real estate prices, human resources, natural resources and technical advancements, etc.
Income distribution within individual countries
Income inequality is measured by
In 2012 the Gini index for income inequality for whole European Union was only 30.6%.
Income distribution can differ from wealth distribution within each country. The wealth inequality is also measured in Gini index. There the higher Gini index signify greater inequality within the wealth distribution in country, 0 means total wealth equality and 1 represents situation, where everyone has no wealth, except an individual that has everything. For instance, countries like Denmark, Norway and Netherlands, all belonging to the last category (below 30%, low-income inequality) also have very high Gini index in wealth distribution, ranging from 70% up to 90%.
Consumption distribution within individual countries
In
Factors proposed to affect economic inequality
There are various reasons for economic inequality within societies, including both global market functions (such as trade, development, and regulation) as well as social factors (including gender, race, and education).[54] Recent growth in overall income inequality, at least within the OECD countries, has been driven mostly by increasing inequality in wages and salaries.[17]
Economist Thomas Piketty argues that widening economic disparity is an inevitable phenomenon of free market capitalism when the rate of return of capital (r) is greater than the rate of growth of the economy (g).[55] According to an IMF report in 2016, after reviewing four decades of neoliberalism, it had warned that certain neoliberal policies including privatization, public spending cuts, and deregulation, have resulted in "increased inequality" and are stunting economic growth globally.[56][57]
Labour market
In modern market economies, if competition is imperfect; information unevenly distributed; opportunities to acquire education and skills unequal; market failure results. Many such imperfect conditions exist in virtually every market. According to Joseph Stiglitz this means that there is an enormous potential role for government to correct such market failures.[58]
In the United States, real wages are flat over the past 40 years for occupations across income and education levels, e.g., auto mechanics, cashiers, doctors, and software engineers.[59] However, stock ownership favors higher income and education levels,[60] thereby resulting in disparate investment income.
Taxes
Another cause is the rate at which
Education
An important factor in the creation of inequality is variation in individuals' access to education.[67] Education, especially in an area where there is a high demand for workers, creates high wages for those with this education.[68] However, increases in education first increase and then decrease growth as well as income inequality. As a result, those who are unable to afford an education, or choose not to pursue optional education, generally receive much lower wages. The justification for this is that a lack of education leads directly to lower incomes, and thus lower aggregate saving and investment. Conversely, quality education raises incomes and promotes growth because it helps to unleash the productive potential of the poor.[69]
Access to education was in turn influenced by land inequalities. In the less industrialized parts of 19th century Europe, for example, landowners still held more political power than industrialists. These landowners did not benefit from educating their workers as much as industrialists did, since "educated workers have more incentives to migrate to urban, industrial areas than their less educated counterparts."[70] Consequently, lower incentives to promote education in regions where land inequality was high led to lower levels of numeracy in these regions.[70]
Economic liberalism, deregulation and decline of unions
John Schmitt and Ben Zipperer (2006) of the CEPR point to
More recently, the International Monetary Fund has published studies which found that the decline of unionization in many advanced economies and the establishment of neoliberal economics have fueled rising income inequality.[72][73]
Contrary to the proponents of neoliberalism, trickle-down economics have been proven to not be effective in resolving economic inequalities but have instead worsened it.[74]
Technology
The growth in importance of
Some researchers, such as Juliet B. Schor, highlight the role of for-profit online sharing economy platforms as an accelerator of income inequality and calls into question their supposed contribution in empowering outsiders of the labour market.[78]
Taking the example of TaskRabbit, a labour service platform, she shows that a large proportion of providers already have a stable full-time job and participate part-time in the platform as an opportunity to increase their income by diversifying their activities outside employment, which tends to restrict the volume of work remaining for the minority of platform workers.
In addition, there is an important phenomenon of labour substitution as manual tasks traditionally performed by workers without a degree (or just a college degree) integrated into the labour market in the traditional economy sectors are now performed by workers with a high level of education (in 2013, 70% of TaskRabbit's workforce held a bachelor's degree, 20% a master's degree and 5% a PhD).[79] The development of platforms, which are increasingly capturing demand for these manual services at the expense of non-platform companies, may therefore benefit mainly skilled workers who are offered more earning opportunities that can be used as supplemental or transitional work during periods of unemployment.
It has also been proposed that information technologies contribute to "winner take most" market concentration, reducing the need for labor across competing suppliers.[80] Market concentration drives down labor's share of the GDP, increasing the wealth of capital and thereby exacerbating inequality.
Automation
Economists have linked automation to increases in economic inequality, as automation raises the returns to wealth and contributes to stagnating wages at the lower end of the wage distribution.[81] Several economists have suggested that automation has increased income inequality by causing low skill jobs to be replaced with machines operated by technologically skilled workers, thereby reducing the demand for unskilled labor while increasing the demand for skilled labor.[15]: 1
Globalization
Trade liberalization may shift economic inequality from a global to a domestic scale.[83] When rich countries trade with poor countries, the low-skilled workers in the rich countries may see reduced wages as a result of the competition, while low-skilled workers in the poor countries may see increased wages. Trade economist Paul Krugman estimates that trade liberalisation has had a measurable effect on the rising inequality in the United States. He attributes this trend to increased trade with poor countries and the fragmentation of the means of production, resulting in low skilled jobs becoming more tradeable.[84]
Anthropologist Jason Hickel contends that globalization and "structural adjustment" set off the "race to the bottom", a significant driver of surging global inequality. Another driver Hickel mentions is the debt system which advanced the need for structural adjustment in the first place.[85]
Gender
In many countries, there is a
Race
There is also a globally recognized disparity in the wealth, income, and economic welfare of people of different races. In many nations, data exists to suggest that members of certain racial demographics experience lower wages, fewer opportunities for career and educational advancement, and intergenerational wealth gaps.[91] Studies have uncovered the emergence of what is called "ethnic capital", by which people belonging to a race that has experienced discrimination are born into a disadvantaged family from the beginning and therefore have less resources and opportunities at their disposal.[92][93] The universal lack of education, technical and cognitive skills, and inheritable wealth within a particular race is often passed down between generations, compounding in effect to make escaping these racialized cycles of poverty increasingly difficult.[93] Additionally, ethnic groups that experience significant disparities are often also minorities, at least in representation though often in number as well, in the nations where they experience the harshest disadvantage. As a result, they are often segregated either by government policy or social stratification, leading to ethnic communities that experience widespread gaps in wealth and aid.[94]
Redlining intentionally excluded black Americans from accumulating intergenerational wealth. The effects of this exclusion on black Americans' health continue to play out daily, generations later, in the same communities. This is evident currently in the disproportionate effects that COVID-19 has had on the same communities which the HOLC redlined in the 1930s. Research published in September 2020 overlaid maps of the highly affected COVID-19 areas with the HOLC maps, showing that those areas marked "risky" to lenders because they contained minority residents were the same neighborhoods most affected by COVID-19. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) looks at inequities in the social determinants of health like concentrated poverty and healthcare access that are interrelated and influence health outcomes with regard to COVID-19 as well as quality of life in general for minority groups. The CDC points to discrimination within health care, education, criminal justice, housing, and finance, direct results of systematically subversive tactics like redlining which led to chronic and toxic stress that shaped social and economic factors for minority groups, increasing their risk for COVID-19. Healthcare access is similarly limited by factors like a lack of public transportation, child care, and communication and language barriers which result from the spatial and economic isolation of minority communities from redlining. Educational, income, and wealth gaps that result from this isolation mean that minority groups' limited access to the job market may force them to remain in fields that have a higher risk of exposure to the virus, without options to take time off. Finally, a direct result of redlining is the overcrowding of minority groups into neighborhoods that do not boast adequate housing to sustain burgeoning populations, leading to crowded conditions that make prevention strategies for COVID-19 nearly impossible to implement.[95][96][97][98][99][100][101]
As a general rule, races which have been historically and systematically colonized (typically indigenous ethnicities) continue to experience lower levels of financial stability in the present day. The
Westernized Nations
While the progression of civil rights movements and justice reform has improved access to education and other economic opportunities in politically advanced nations, racial income and wealth disparity still exists.[102] In the United States for example, a survey[when?] of African American populations show that they are more likely to drop out of high school and college, are typically employed for fewer hours at lower wages, have lower than average intergenerational wealth, and are more likely to use welfare as young adults than their white counterparts.[103]
Mexican-Americans, while suffering less debilitating socioeconomic factors than black Americans, experience deficiencies in the same areas when compared to whites and have not assimilated financially to the level of stability experienced by white Americans as a whole.[104] These experiences are the effects of the measured disparity due to race in countries like the US, where studies show that in comparison to whites, blacks suffer from drastically lower levels of upward mobility, higher levels of downward mobility, and poverty that is more easily transmitted to offspring as a result of the disadvantage stemming from the era of slavery and post-slavery racism that has been passed through racial generations to the present.[105][106][107] These are lasting financial inequalities that apply in varying magnitudes to most non-white populations in nations such as the US, the UK, France, Spain, Australia, etc.[91]
Latin America
In the countries of the Caribbean, Central America, and South America, many ethnicities continue to deal with the effects of European colonization, and in general nonwhites tend to be noticeably poorer than whites in this region. In many countries with significant populations of indigenous races and those of Afro-descent (such as Mexico, Colombia, Chile, etc.) income levels can be roughly half as high as those experiences by white demographics, and this inequity is accompanied by systematically unequal access to education, career opportunities, and poverty relief. This region of the world, apart from urbanizing areas like Brazil and Costa Rica, continues to be understudied and often the racial disparity is denied by Latin Americans who consider themselves to be living in post-racial and post-colonial societies far removed from intense social and economic stratification despite the evidence to the contrary.[108]
Africa
African countries, too, continue to deal with the effects of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, which set back economic development as a whole for blacks of African citizenship more than any other region. The degree to which colonizers stratified their holdings on the continent on the basis of race has had a direct correlation in the magnitude of disparity experienced by nonwhites in the nations that eventually rose from their colonial status. Former French colonies, for example, see much higher rates of income inequality between whites and nonwhites as a result of the rigid hierarchy imposed by the French who lived in Africa at the time.[109] Another example is found in South Africa, which, still reeling from the socioeconomic impacts of Apartheid, experiences some of the highest racial income and wealth inequality in all of Africa.[105] In these and other countries like Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and Sierra Leone, movements of civil reform have initially led to improved access to financial advancement opportunities, but data[when?] shows that for nonwhites this progress is either stalling or erasing itself in the newest generation of blacks that seek education and improved transgenerational wealth. The economic status of one's parents continues to define and predict the financial futures of African and minority ethnic groups.[110][needs update]
Asia
Asian regions and countries such as China, the Middle East, and Central Asia have been vastly understudied in terms of racial disparity, but even here the effects of Western colonization provide similar results to those found in other parts of the globe.[91] Additionally, cultural and historical practices such as the caste system in India leave their marks as well. While the disparity is greatly improving in the case of India, there still exists social stratification between peoples of lighter and darker skin tones that cumulatively result in income and wealth inequality, manifesting in many of the same poverty traps seen elsewhere.[111]
Economic development
Economist Simon Kuznets argued that levels of economic inequality are in large part the result of stages of development. According to Kuznets, countries with low levels of development have relatively equal distributions of wealth. In the early stages, individual sectors or industries are developed first, which leads to an unequal distribution of income and wealth, resulting in growing inequality within a country. As the economy progresses and development takes place in more economic sectors, eventually attracting more workers, economic inequality decreases.[112] Although the Kuznets curve described the development of inequality well at the time of its publication, there is now a growing number of critical voices questioning the link between inequality and development. [113]
Wealth concentration
Wealth concentration is the process by which, under certain conditions, newly created
Rent seeking
Economist Joseph Stiglitz argues that rather than explaining concentrations of wealth and income, market forces should serve as a brake on such concentration, which may better be explained by the non-market force known as "rent-seeking". While the market will bid up compensation for rare and desired skills to reward wealth creation, greater productivity, etc., it will also prevent successful entrepreneurs from earning excess profits by fostering competition to cut prices, profits and large compensation.[115] A better explainer of growing inequality, according to Stiglitz, is the use of political power generated by wealth by certain groups to shape government policies financially beneficial to them. This process, known to economists as rent-seeking, brings income not from creation of wealth but from "grabbing a larger share of the wealth that would otherwise have been produced without their effort".[116]
Finance industry
Global warming and climate change
A 2019 study published in
A 2020 report by
In July 2023, a letter sent to the United Nations secretary general António Guterres and World Bank president Ajay Banga by a group of over 200 economists from 67 countries, including Jayati Ghosh, Joseph Stiglitz and Thomas Piketty, warned that if the sharp increase in economic inequality is not reversed, it will "entrench poverty and increase the risk of climate breakdown."[125]
Politics
Joseph Stiglitz argues in The Price of Inequality (2012) that the economic inequality is inevitable and permanent, because it is caused by the great amount of political power the richest have.[58] He wrote, "While there may be underlying economic forces at play, politics have shaped the market, and shaped it in ways that advantage the top at the expense of the rest."
Cognitive biases
Research has shown that biased decision-making does not alone explain a significant proportion of inequality, therefore inequality cannot be explained by cognitive biases of a specific sub-population, such as temporal discounting (i.e., not preferring immediate funds over larger future gains), overestimation (i.e. thinking you are better than you are at making decisions), over-placement (i.e. thinking you are better than the average person at making decisions), and extremeness aversion (i.e. taking the 'middle option' simply because it seems safer than the highest or lowest).[126]
Mitigating factors
Countries with a left-leaning legislature generally have lower levels of inequality.[128][129] Many factors constrain economic inequality – they may be divided into two classes: market driven, and government sponsored. The relative merits and effectiveness of each approach is a subject of debate:
- wealth concentration.[130] On the other hand, high-income persons have higher propensity to save.[131] Robin Maialeh then shows that increasing economic wealth decreases propensity to spend and increases propensity to invest which consequently leads to even greater growth rate of already rich agents.[132]
Typical government initiatives intended to reduce economic inequality include:
- Public education: increasing the supply of skilled labor and reducing income inequality due to education differentials.[133]
- Progressive taxation: the rich are taxed proportionally more than the poor, reducing the amount of income inequality in society if the change in taxation does not cause changes in income.[134]
Research shows that since 1300, the only periods with significant declines in wealth inequality in Europe were the Black Death and the two World Wars.[135] Historian Walter Scheidel posits that, since the Stone Age, only extreme violence, catastrophes and upheaval in the form of total war, Communist revolutions, the French Revolution, pestilence and state collapse have significantly reduced inequality.[136][137] He has stated that "only all-out thermonuclear war might fundamentally reset the existing distribution of resources" and that "peaceful policy reform may well prove unequal to the growing challenges ahead."[138][139] However, Scheidel also stated that "There is certainly room for incremental change, that's what the example of Latin America shows in the past 15 years or so."[137]
Policy responses intended to mitigate
A 2011 OECD study makes a number of suggestions to its member countries, including:[18]
- Well-targeted income-support policies.
- Facilitation and encouragement of access to employment.
- Better job-related training and education for the low-skilled (on-the-job training) would help to boost their productivity potential and future earnings.
- Better access to formal education.
Deferred investment programs that increase stock ownership amongst lower income levels can supplement income to compensate wage stagnation.[59]
The economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty recommend much higher top marginal tax rates on the wealthy, up to 50 percent, 70 percent or even 90 percent.[144] Ralph Nader, Jeffrey Sachs, the United Front Against Austerity, among others, call for a financial transaction tax (also known as the Robin Hood tax) to bolster the social safety net and the public sector.[145][146]
The Economist wrote in December 2013: "A minimum wage, providing it is not set too high, could thus boost pay with no ill effects on jobs....America's federal minimum wage, at 38% of median income, is one of the rich world's lowest. Some studies find no harm to employment from federal or state minimum wages, others see a small one, but none finds any serious damage."[147]
General limitations on and taxation of rent-seeking are popular across the political spectrum.[148]
Public policy responses addressing causes and effects of income inequality in the US include: progressive tax incidence adjustments, strengthening social safety net provisions such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children, welfare, the food stamp program, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, organizing community interest groups, increasing and reforming higher education subsidies, increasing infrastructure spending, and placing limits on and taxing rent-seeking.[149]
A 2017 study in the
There are however global initiative like the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 10 which aims to garner international efforts in reducing economic inequality considerably by 2030.[152]
Effects
A lot of research has been done about the effects of economic inequality on different aspects in society:
- Health: For long time the higher material living standards lead to longer life, as those people were able to get enough food, water and access to warmth. British researchers
- Social goods: British researchers trust among strangers, women's status, social mobility, even numbers of patents issued) in countries and states with higher inequality.[153][154]
- Social cohesion: Research has shown an inverse link between income inequality and social cohesion. In more equal societies, people are much more likely to trust each other, measures of social capital(the benefits of goodwill, fellowship, mutual sympathy and social connectedness among groups who make up a social units) suggest greater community involvement.
- Happiness: According to the 2019 World Happiness Report, increasing socioeconomic inequality, along with rising healthcare costs, surging addiction rates, and an unhealthy work–life balance, are causes of unhappiness around the world.[158][159]
- Crime: The cross national research shows that in societies with less economic inequality the homicide rates are consistently lower.[160] A 2016 study finds that interregional inequality increases terrorism.[161] Other research has argued inequality has little effect on crime rates.[162][163]
- Welfare: Studies have found evidence that in societies where inequality is lower, population-wide satisfaction and happiness tend to be higher.[164][165][166][167]
- Poverty: Study made by Jared Bernstein and Elise Gould suggest, that the poverty in the United States could have been reduced by the lowering of economic inequality for the past few decades.[168][169]
- Debt: Income inequality has been the driving factor in the growing household debt,[170][171] as high earners bid up the price of real estate and middle income earners go deeper into debt trying to maintain what once was a middle class lifestyle.[172]
- Economic growth: A 2016 meta-analysis found that "the effect of inequality on growth is negative and more pronounced in less developed countries than in rich countries", though the average impact on growth was not significant. The study also found that wealth inequality is more pernicious to growth than income inequality.[14]
- Civic participation: Higher income inequality led to less of all forms of social, cultural, and civic participation among the less wealthy.[173]
- Political instability: Studies indicate that economic inequality leads to greater political instability, including an increased risk of democratic breakdown[12][174][175][176][177] and civil conflict.[178][13] A significant impact of inequality on civil war probability has been found through anthropometric methods.[179]
- Political party responses: One study finds that economic inequality prompts attempts by left-leaning politicians to pursue redistributive policies while right-leaning politicians seek to repress the redistributive policies.[180]
Perspectives
Fairness vs. equality
According to Christina Starmans et al. (Nature Hum. Beh., 2017), the research literature contains no evidence on people having an aversion to inequality. In all studies analyzed, the subjects preferred fair distributions (inequity aversion) to equal distributions, in both laboratory and real-world situations. In public, researchers may loosely speak of equality instead of fairness, when referring to studies where fairness happens to coincide with equality, but in many studies fairness is carefully separated from equality and the results are univocal. Very young children seem to prefer fairness over equality.[181]
When people were asked, what would be the wealth of each quintile in their ideal society, they gave a 50-fold sum to the richest quintile than to the poorest quintile. The preference for inequality increases in adolescence, and so do the capabilities to favor fortune, effort and ability in the distribution.[181]
Preference for unequal distribution has been developed to the human race possibly because it allows for better co-operation and allows a person to work with a more productive person so that both parties benefit from the co-operation. Inequality is also said to be able to solve the problems of free-riders, cheaters and ill-behaving people, although this is heavily debated.[181] Researches demonstrate that people usually underestimate the level of actual inequality, which is also much higher than their desired level of inequality.[182]
In many societies, such as the USSR, the distribution led to protests from wealthier landowners.[183] In the current U.S., many feel that the distribution is unfair in being too unequal. In both cases, the cause is unfairness, not inequality, the researchers conclude.[181]
Socialist perspectives
Marxist socialists ultimately predict the emergence of a
Meritocracy
Meritocracy favors an eventual society where an individual's success is a direct function of his merit, or contribution. Economic inequality would be a natural consequence of the wide range in individual skill, talent and effort in human population. David Landes stated that the progression of Western economic development that led to the Industrial Revolution was facilitated by men advancing through their own merit rather than because of family or political connections.[187]
Liberal perspectives
Most modern social liberals, including centrist or left-of-center political groups, believe that the capitalist economic system should be fundamentally preserved, but the status quo regarding the income gap must be reformed. Social liberals favor a capitalist system with active Keynesian macroeconomic policies and progressive taxation (to even out differences in income inequality). Research indicates that people who hold liberal beliefs tend to see greater income inequality as morally wrong.[188]
However, contemporary
The liberal champions of equality under the law were fully aware of the fact that men are born unequal and that it is precisely their inequality that generates social cooperation and civilization. Equality under the law was in their opinion not designed to correct the inexorable facts of the universe and to make natural inequality disappear. It was, on the contrary, the device to secure for the whole of mankind the maximum of benefits it can derive from it. Henceforth no man-made institutions should prevent a man from attaining that station in which he can best serve his fellow citizens.
Robert Nozick argued that government redistributes wealth by force (usually in the form of taxation), and that the ideal moral society would be one where all individuals are free from force. However, Nozick recognized that some modern economic inequalities were the result of forceful taking of property, and a certain amount of redistribution would be justified to compensate for this force but not because of the inequalities themselves.[189] John Rawls argued in A Theory of Justice[190] that inequalities in the distribution of wealth are only justified when they improve society as a whole, including the poorest members. Rawls does not discuss the full implications of his theory of justice. Some see Rawls's argument as a justification for capitalism since even the poorest members of society theoretically benefit from increased innovations under capitalism; others believe only a strong welfare state can satisfy Rawls's theory of justice.[191]
Classical liberal Milton Friedman believed that if government action is taken in pursuit of economic equality then political freedom would suffer. In a famous quote, he said:
A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.
Economist Tyler Cowen has argued that though income inequality has increased within nations, globally it has fallen over the 20 years leading up to 2014. He argues that though income inequality may make individual nations worse off, overall, the world has improved as global inequality has been reduced.[192]
Social justice arguments
Patrick Diamond and Anthony Giddens (professors of Economics and Sociology, respectively) hold that 'pure meritocracy is incoherent because, without redistribution, one generation's successful individuals would become the next generation's embedded caste, hoarding the wealth they had accumulated'.[193]
They also state that social justice requires redistribution of high incomes and large concentrations of wealth in a way that spreads it more widely, in order to "recognize the contribution made by all sections of the community to building the nation's wealth." (Patrick Diamond and Anthony Giddens, June 27, 2005, New Statesman)[194]
Pope Francis stated in his Evangelii gaudium, that "as long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world's problems or, for that matter, to any problems."[195] He later declared that "inequality is the root of social evil."[196]
When income inequality is low,
Effects on social welfare
In most western democracies, the desire to eliminate or reduce economic inequality is generally associated with the
It has also been argued that economic inequality invariably translates to political inequality, which further aggravates the problem. Even in cases where an increase in economic inequality makes nobody economically poorer, an increased inequality of resources is disadvantageous, as increased economic inequality can lead to a power shift due to an increased inequality in the ability to participate in democratic processes.[200] According to Paul and Moser, countries with high income inequality and poor unemployment protections experience worse mental health outcomes among the unemployed.[201]
Capabilities approach
The capabilities approach – sometimes called the human development approach – looks at income inequality and poverty as form of "capability deprivation".[202] Unlike neoliberalism, which "defines well-being as utility maximization", economic growth and income are considered a means to an end rather than the end itself.[203] Its goal is to "wid[en] people's choices and the level of their achieved well-being"[204] through increasing functioning (the things a person values doing), capabilities (the freedom to enjoy functionings) and agency (the ability to pursue valued goals).[205]
When a person's capabilities are lowered, they are in some way deprived of earning as much income as they would otherwise. An old, ill man cannot earn as much as a healthy young man; gender roles and customs may prevent a woman from receiving an education or working outside the home. There may be an epidemic that causes widespread panic, or there could be rampant violence in the area that prevents people from going to work for fear of their lives.[202] As a result, income inequality increases, and it becomes more difficult to reduce the gap without additional aid.
Societal acceptance
A 2022 study published in Perspectives on Psychological Science found that in countries where neoliberal institutions have significant influence over policies, the psychology of those population are shaped to have both a higher tolerance of large levels of income inequality, and prefer it over more egalitarian outcomes.[206]
Arguments that economic inequality is not a problem
The majority of researchers who analyze economic inequality argue that today's levels are problematic and deserve some mitigation.
See also
- Accumulation of capital
- Anti-capitalism
- Aporophobia
- Class conflict
- Criticism of capitalism
- Cycle of poverty
- Donor Class
- Economic anxiety
- Economic migrant
- Economic security
- Equal opportunity
- Great Divergence, disproportionate economic advancement of Europe
- Human Development Index
- Humanistic economics
- Income distribution
- Income inequality metrics
- Inequality for All
- International inequality
- List of countries by distribution of wealth
- List of countries by income equality
- List of countries by wealth per adult
- Occupy movement
- Paradise Papers
- Poverty reduction
- Precariat
- Precarious work
- Public university
- Rent-seeking
- Social inequality
- Spatial inequality
- Tax haven
- Theories of poverty
- Wealth concentration
- Wealth distribution
References
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Further reading
- Books
- Alfani, Guido; Tullio, Matteo Di (2019). The Lion's Share: Inequality and the Rise of the Fiscal State in Preindustrial Europe. Cambridge University Press.
- ISBN 978-0444816313.
- ISBN 0674504763
- ISBN 978-0262025539.
- ISBN 978-0745634319.
- Gilens, Martin (2012). Affluence and influence: Economic inequality and political power in America. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691162423.
- Gradín, Carlos; Leibbrandt, Murray; Tarp, Finn, eds. (2021). Inequality In The Developing World. WIDER Studies in Development Economics. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0198863960.
- John, K (2023). Foundations of Real-World Economics (3rd Edition) Section 9.1. Routledge.
- Lambert, Peter J. (2001). The distribution and redistribution of income (3rd ed.). Manchester, NY: Manchester University Press Palgrave. ISBN 978-0719057328.
- Page, Benjamin I.; Jacobs, Lawrence R. (2009). Class war?: What Americans really think about economic inequality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0226644554.
- Ribeiro, Marcelo Byrro (2020). Income Distribution Dynamics of Economic Systems: An Econophysical Approach. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1107092532.
- Salverda, Wiemer; Nolan, Brian; Smeeding, Timothy M. (2009). The Oxford handbook of economic inequality. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199231379.
- ISBN 978-0691165028.
- ISBN 978-0521539364.
- ISBN 978-0198297581.
- ISBN 978-0198281931.
- ISBN 978-0415372695.
- ISBN 978-1846140396.
- Articles
- Ahamed, Liaquat (September 2, 2019). "Widening Gyre: The rise and fall and rise of economic inequality". The New Yorker. pp. 26–29.
[T]here seems to [be] some sort of cap on inequality – a limit to the economic divisions a country can ultimately cope with.
- Alesina, Alberto; Di Tella, Rafael; MacCulloch, Robert (2004). "Inequality and happiness: Are Europeans and Americans different?". Journal of Public Economics. 88 (9–10): 2009–42. .
- Andersen, Robert (2012). "Support for Democracy in Cross-national Perspective: The Detrimental Effect of Economic Inequality" (PDF). Research in Social Stratification and Mobility. 30 (4): 389–402. doi:10.1016/j.rssm.2012.04.002. Archived from the original(PDF) on June 24, 2021. Retrieved May 12, 2019.
- Andersen, Robert; Fetner, Tina (2008). "Economic Inequality and Intolerance: Attitudes toward Homosexuality in 35 Democracies". American Journal of Political Science. 52 (4): 942–58. JSTOR 25193859.
- Barro, Robert J. (1991). "Economic Growth in a Cross Section of Countries". The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 106 (2): 407–43. JSTOR 2937943.
- Barro, Robert J. (2000). "Inequality and Growth in a Panel of Countries". Journal of Economic Growth. 5 (1): 5–32. S2CID 2089406.
- Cousin, Bruno; Chauvin, Sébastien (2021). "Is there a global super-bourgeoisie?" Sociology Compass 15 (6): 1–15.
- Cousin, Bruno; Shamus Khan; Ashley Mears (2018). "Theoretical and methodological pathways for research on elites" Socio-Economic Review 16 (2): 225–249.
- Galor, Oded; Zeira, Joseph (1993). "Income Distribution and Macroeconomics". The Review of Economic Studies. 60 (1): 35–52. JSTOR 2297811.
- Goudarzi, Shahrzad; Badaan, Vivienne; Knowles, Eric D. (May 10, 2022). "Neoliberalism and the Ideological Construction of Equity Beliefs". S2CID 237727224.
- Hatch, Megan E.; Rigby, Elizabeth (2015). "Laboratories of (In)equality? Redistributive Policy and Income Inequality in the American States". Policy Studies Journal. 43 (2): 163–187. .
- Kaldor, Nicholas (1955). "Alternative Theories of Distribution". The Review of Economic Studies. 23 (2): 83–100. JSTOR 2296292.
- Kenworthy, Lane (2010). "Rising Inequality, Public Policy, and America's Poor". Challenge. 53 (6): 93–109. S2CID 154630590.
- Kenworthy, Lane (2017). "Why the Surge in Income Inequality?". Contemporary Sociology. 46 (1): 1–9. S2CID 151979382.
- .
- OCLC 302702.
- Sala-i-Martin, X. (2006). "The World Distribution of Income: Falling Poverty and ... Convergence, Period". The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 121 (2): 351–97. JSTOR 25098796.
- Seguino, Stephanie (2000). "Gender Inequality and Economic Growth: A Cross-Country Analysis". World Development. 28 (7): 1211–30. .
- Smeeding, Timothy M.; Thompson, Jeffrey P. (2011). "Recent Trends in Income Inequality". In Immervoll, Herwig; Peichl, Andreas; Tatsiramos, Konstantinos (eds.). Who Loses in the Downturn? Economic Crisis, Employment and Income Distribution. Research in Labor Economics. Vol. 32. pp. 1–50. ISBN 978-0857247490.
- Solow, Robert M. (1956). "A Contribution to the Theory of Economic Growth". The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 70 (1): 65–94. JSTOR 1884513.
- Stewart, Alexander J.; McCarty, Nolan; Bryson, Joanna J. (2020). "Polarization under rising inequality and economic decline". S2CID 216144890.
Historical
- Crayen, Dorothee; Joerg, Baten (2010). "New evidence and new methods to measure human capital inequality before and during the industrial revolution: France and the US in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries". Economic History Review. 63.2: 452–478.
- Hoffman, Philip T. (2002). "Real inequality in Europe since 1500". Journal of Economic History. 62.2: 322–355.
- Lindert, Peter H.; Steven, Nafziger (2014). "Russian inequality on the eve of revolution". Journal of Economic History. 74.3: 767–798.
- Morrisson, Christian; Wayne, Snyder (2000). "The income inequality of France in historical perspective" (PDF). European Review of Economic History. 4.1: 59–83.
- Nicolini, Esteban A.; Ramos Palencia, Fernando (2016). "Decomposing income inequality in a backward pre-industrial economy: Old Castile (Spain) in the middle of the eighteenth century". Economic History Review. 69 (3): 747–772. S2CID 154988112.
- Piketty, Thomas; Emmanuel, Saez (2006). "The evolution of top incomes: a historical and international perspective" (PDF). American economic review. 96.2: 200–205.
- Piketty, Thomas; Emmanuel, Saez (2003). "Income inequality in the United States, 1913–1998". Quarterly journal of economics. 118.1: 1–41.
- Saito, Osamu (2015). "Growth and inequality in the great and little divergence debate: a Japanese perspective; Covers 1600–1868 with comparison to Stuart England and Mughal India". Economic History Review. 68.2: 399–419.
- Stewart, Frances (2016). "Changing perspectives on inequality and development". Studies in Comparative International Development. 51.1: 60–80.
- Sutch, Richard (2017). "The One Percent across Two Centuries: A Replication of Thomas Piketty's Data on the Concentration of Wealth in the United States" (PDF). Social Science History. 41.4: 587–613.
- Van, Zanden; Jan, Luiten (1995). "Tracing the beginning of the Kuznets curve: Western Europe during the early modern period" (PDF). Economic History Review. 48.4: 643–664.
- Wei, Yehua Dennis (2017). "Geography of inequality in Asia" (PDF). Geographical Review. 107.2: 263–275.
External links
- Bowles, Samuel; Carlin, Wendy (2020). "Inequality as experienced difference: A reformulation of the Gini coefficient". Economics Letters. 186: 108789. ISSN 0165-1765.