56,000 people own three times more wealth than half of humanity by World Inequality Lab, OHCHR, agencies 12:47pm 17th Jun, 2026   June 2026    Changing the rules of the global economy, by Olivier De Schutter, Joseph Stiglitz, Jayati Ghosh, Thomas Piketty, Kate Raworth and Jason Hickel.    We live in an age of manufactured scarcity. In a world richer than ever before, roughly one 10th of the world’s population still lives in extreme destitution.    Millions of people cannot afford enough food, proper housing or basic healthcare, while a tiny minority accumulates unprecedented wealth and power.    At the same time, droughts, megafires, floods and heatwaves remind us that our economies are pushing the planet beyond its limits.    These are not separate crises. They are symptoms of an economic model that has reached the end of the road.    Poverty and inequality are not accidents; they are predictable outcomes of policy choices: how we design tax systems, regulate labour markets, value care, structure public services and decide whose needs and whose voices matter. Crucially, if governments can manufacture poverty, they can also dismantle it.    For decades, the recipe was simple: grow the economy, and poverty would gradually disappear. But the promise that economic growth would “lift all boats” has not been kept. While national incomes expanded, wages stagnated, work became more precarious and public services were cut. At the top, fortunes ballooned; at the bottom, families turned to food banks. Growth has become decoupled from shared prosperity.    It has also become ecologically unsustainable. We are edging towards a “hothouse Earth”, where rising emissions and biodiversity loss are destabilising the conditions that support human life.    Around 92% of excess global carbon emissions can be attributed to the global north, and the wealthiest 10% of individuals are responsible for nearly half of global emissions, while people in poverty are the first to face crop failures and rising food prices. An economic model that depends on endless expansion on a finite planet is not just unfair; it is dangerous    Many low‑income countries still need growth to build roads, hospitals, schools, renewable energy and decent jobs. But the dominant path to growth – based on resource extraction, cheap and compliant labour, export dependence and deepening debt – has widened inequality and degraded the environment.    The real question today is not whether growth continues, but what kind of economies we are building, who they serve and whether they allow everyone to live in dignity within planetary boundaries.    That is why we have come together to develop and support the “roadmap for eradicating poverty beyond growth”. The roadmap provides a range of alternatives on how to move beyond the narrow “grow-tax-transfer” approach that has shaped policy for decades. It is not a blueprint shaped by a handful of experts, it is the exact opposite.    Over 18 months UN agencies, national governments, academic experts, civil society organisations, trade unions, social and solidarity economy actors and grassroots movements, from the global north and south – worked to answer a simple question: how can we end poverty and reduce inequalities without treating GDP growth as the primary condition for progress?    We do not agree on every policy detail. But we are united in the conviction that our economies must be redesigned around the fulfilment of rights and collective wellbeing within planetary boundaries, rather than maximising output at any cost.    Human rights here are not an afterthought; they are the organising principle for how we measure progress, set priorities and resolve trade‑offs. Social protection and public services are essential, but they cannot indefinitely compensate for economies that by design generate poverty wages, insecure jobs and unaffordable housing.    We need to change the rules upstream. That means, for instance, decent work and employment guarantees, living wages and fair remuneration, stronger unions and workplace democracy, tackling discrimination and valuing the paid and unpaid care work on which our societies depend.    It means investing in children, housing, health, education and transport through universal public provisioning. It means public control of strategic assets, credit guidance to steer investment towards social and ecological priorities, and support for the development of the social and solidarity economy.    Implementing this vision means changing the rules of the global economy. Today, governments in the global south are chided for not doing enough to tackle poverty, while being squeezed by unilateral sanctions, restrictive trade agreements, unequal exchange and debt burdens rooted in centuries of colonial dispossession.    About 3.4 billion people live in countries that spend more on debt servicing than on healthcare or education. Meanwhile, global supply chains enable a vast net transfer of labour and resources from south to north.    International solidarity is therefore a legal and moral obligation rooted in the historical reality that many rich countries built their wealth by impoverishing the south, through patterns of extraction that continue today in new forms.    A just transition beyond growth must include debt justice, increased south-south cooperation, reparative climate finance and support for universal social protection floors, rooted in the principles of non-domination and self-determination so that countries can chart their own sovereign economic futures.    Equally crucial is who gets to shape this transition. All too often, policies affecting people in poverty are designed without them – and sometimes against them. When welfare systems are built around suspicion, sanctions and humiliating conditions, they deepen stigma and deter people from claiming their entitlements.    Those who live in poverty know better than anyone how systems can fail in practice. Their expertise must guide the design, implementation and monitoring of anti‑poverty strategies, from local councils to parliaments and international forums.    We are not starting from zero. Around the world, Indigenous struggles, feminist organising, trade unions and climate justice movements are defending and building alternative futures rooted in collective care and territorial rights.    New coalitions of states are advancing new visions of global economic governance, and governments are experimenting with rights‑based anti‑poverty strategies, citizens’ assemblies and community wealth building.    The UN and many partners are exploring “beyond GDP” indicators and new institutions, such as an international panel on inequality, to help chart this shift.    Our roadmap builds on these efforts, connects them and pushes them further. We offer it now as a common reference point for those who refuse to accept that poverty and ecological breakdown are the price to pay for how we currently define economic “success”.    Governments and multilateral institutions have a choice: double down on a failing growth-first model or commit to eradicating poverty by transforming the economic rules that produce it.    Poverty is manufactured. That is the bad news – and the good news. What has been manufactured can be dismantled and replaced. We are putting concrete options on the table, all backed by detailed policy profiles that spell out evidence, implementation steps and real‑world examples.    We call on political leaders at all levels to use them, to listen to those most affected, and to treat the end of poverty, the reduction of inequalities and the effective realisation of human rights as the measure by which economic policy should be judged.    * Olivier De Schutter is the chair of New Economies for Eradicating Poverty; Joseph Stiglitz is a Nobel laureate in economics; Jayati Ghosh is professor of economics at University of Massachusetts Amherst; Thomas Piketty is professor of economics at the Paris School of Economics; Kate Raworth is an economist at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute; Jason Hickel is a political economist and professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.    http://www.neep-poverty.org/roadmap-for-eradicating-poverty-beyond-growth/ http://www.neep-poverty.org/event/world-inequality-conference-2026/ http://www.neep-poverty.org/ http://www.un.org/beyondgdp http://www.hrw.org/news/2026/05/21/milestone-un-reports-advocate-moving-beyond-gdp http://www.srpoverty.org/2026/01/27/time-opinion-economic-growth-at-any-cost-fails-us-all/http://www.ohchr.org/en/stories/2025/10/more-gdp-measuring-what-really-matters-people-and-rights    15 June 2026    Inequality is a structural crisis cutting across rich and poor countries alike, by Adriana Abdenur for Project Syndicate. (Extract)    Nestled between mountains and a pristine lake, Evian-les-Bains, the French town where G7 leaders are gathering today, evokes an image of stability and prosperity. Yet beyond the summit venue lies a world marked by deepening economic insecurity, political fragmentation, climate change and rising distrust in institutions.    And at the centre of these interconnected crises is a challenge that governments continue to treat as an afterthought: ever rising inequality.    This G7 summit puts ‘global imbalances’ at the top of its agenda, with French President Emmanuel Macron warning that the international economy is becoming a theatre of confrontation rather than cooperation. But if G7 leaders are serious about addressing that problem, they must tackle inequality head-on.    That means abandoning the mistaken view that inequality is primarily a problem for developing countries. Extreme disparities in income, wealth, opportunity and political influence have become a defining feature of the global economy, affecting rich and poor countries alike.    In OECD countries, the wealthiest 10 per cent of households hold roughly half of all household wealth, while the bottom 40 per cent hold around four per cent.    From stagnant living standards, declining social mobility and political polarisation to growing scepticism toward democratic institutions, the consequences are increasingly visible across the G7 itself.    The question facing G7 leaders, then, is not whether inequality matters, but whether they are willing to recognise it as the systemic problem it has become.    Last year, the Extraordinary Committee on Inequality, established under South Africa’s G20 presidency and chaired by Joseph Stiglitz and Jayati Ghosh, concluded that the world faces an ‘inequality emergency’.    Among its findings were that one-quarter of people worldwide experience moderate or severe food insecurity; and that the richest one per cent of humanity captured 41 per cent of all new wealth created globally since 2000, while the bottom half captured just one per cent.    These figures show that inequality is increasingly shaping the rules of the entire economy. For G7 governments, this should raise serious concerns about the priorities they claim to champion.    Consider economic growth. For decades, policymakers assumed that even concentrated wealth would drive investment and innovation. Yet growing evidence suggests that when large shares of national income flow to those already at the top, consumption slows, and business dynamism suffers.    Rising inequality also has become a powerful source of political instability in advanced economies, as frustration with stagnant wages, food prices, housing insecurity and declining public services fuels anti-establishment sentiment.    When a small number of corporations and billionaires control an outsize share of economic resources, they gain disproportionate political influence through lobbying, campaign financing, media ownership, algorithmic manipulation and privileged access to decision-makers.    Public policy then becomes more skewed toward serving moneyed interests, reinforcing the perception that the political system is rigged. Democracy becomes harder to sustain when citizens believe that political influence can be bought and economic outcomes are predetermined.    The rapid development of AI has added a new dimension to this challenge. AI has the potential to drive innovation and scientific progress. But without deliberate policy choices, its economic benefits may well become concentrated among a small number of firms and countries, at the expense of many workers and communities. Ensuring that AI contributes to broad-based prosperity, rather than reinforcing existing inequalities, should be a top priority.    The French presidency has identified the erosion of international cooperation as a major challenge. But geopolitical tensions cannot be separated from global disparities. The benefits of globalisation remain unevenly distributed and geopolitical fragmentation is accelerating.    Inequality is often treated as a symptom, rather than as a systemic force shaping economic, political and environmental outcomes. It is also why one of the most important recommendations to emerge from the G20 process deserves serious consideration: the creation of an International Panel on Inequality.    Modelled on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, such a body would bring together leading experts from around the world to provide regular, independent assessments of global inequality trends and policy options.    It would help establish common metrics, identify successful interventions, strengthen evidence-based policymaking, and elevate inequality to the level of urgency that governments have accorded to other global issues.    An International Panel on Inequality would not dictate policy choices, but it would provide governments with the knowledge to make decisions in a rapidly changing world. Just as climate science has helped shape international action, a shared evidence base for understanding inequality could improve policy coordination and cooperation.    The G7 is uniquely positioned to advance this initiative. Its members continue to wield enormous influence over international financial institutions, development finance and global economic governance. They can help move inequality from the margins of international discussions to the centre of economic policymaking, not as an act of charity, but as an investment in their own future.    G7 leaders should begin by acknowledging that there can be no lasting economic stability, democratic resilience, or sustainable prosperity without confronting the inequality emergency.    * Adriana Abdenur is Co-President of the Global Fund for a New Economy.    http://ipdcolumbia.org/event/landmark-g20-report-led-by-nobel-laureate-joseph-stiglitz-sounds-alarm-on-inequality-emergency-and-calls-for-international-panel-on-inequality/ http://www.unognewsroom.org/story/en/3054/unrisd-ipi-committee    June 2026    The era of trillionaires will be dire for democracy, by Gabriel Zucman.    The stock market listing of SpaceX has led to an outpouring of celebration, from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. Yet those who rejoice in Elon Musk’s fortune surpassing the $1tn mark need to be reminded of a simple and vital truth: the mere existence of trillionaires is a major political and economic problem, probably the defining issue of our time.    Simply put, there is a fundamental tension between extreme wealth and the very possibility of democracy.    Extreme wealth is always an extreme power. It’s the power to stifle competition, the power to shape public discourse, the power to influence policymaking, the power to buy elections, the power to stall social progress.    This problem is not new: all the thinkers of democracy, from Aristotle more than 2,000 years ago to Lea Ypi at the London School of Economics today, have highlighted the corrosive nature of extreme wealth for society.    Even conservative thinkers acknowledge it. James Madison, the father of the US constitution and a hero to today’s conservatives, memorably wrote that wealth inequality is as poisonous for democracy as war. “In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied … The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes,” he wrote.    For some time, after the second world war, it looked like extreme wealth belonged to the past and that we could forget this problem. After the shocks of the wars and the rise of progressive income and inheritance taxation – with top marginal tax rates that reached nearly 90% in both the UK and the US in the postwar decades – extreme wealth had largely disappeared. But it’s now coming back in full force.    In 1989, the first year the Sunday Times Magazine compiled its rich list, the 0.001% wealthiest families living in the UK – about 200 families – owned wealth equivalent to 5% of UK GDP. Today that same group of the population owns wealth equivalent to 20% of UK GDP. It means that if they spent all their wealth, these 200 families could buy the equivalent of a fifth of all the goods and services produced in a given year in the UK.    The explosion has been even bigger in the United States, where the wealth of the super-rich now far exceeds its peak of the beginning of the 20th century. At the height of the Gilded Age, around 1910, the four largest American fortunes owned wealth equivalent to 4% of US GDP. Today, that same tiny fraction of the population, the top 0.00001% – which now includes 19 households – could buy 14% of everything produced in a given year in the US.    That’s how Musk could buy Twitter on a whim for $44bn in 2022; that’s how Larry Ellison can buy TikTok, CBS and CNN today; that’s how billionaires could account for 20% of all political donations in the 2024 federal election cycle.    There is sometimes a view that the wealth of these billionaires is somehow “virtual”: it is not like cash at the bank but merely notional. The super-rich would be benign figures, according to this view, less influential than unions or advocacy groups.    But extreme wealth is in fact always very real, and a lot of the problems in today’s world are downstream of the booming influence of the super-rich on policymaking.    The first trillionaire himself couldn’t illustrate it better. Tesla, the company Musk founded in 2003, didn’t turn a profit until 2020. This didn’t prevent him from buying Twitter, and turning the social network into a platform for a variety of political and ideological causes, including getting Donald Trump re-elected. His fealty earned him a quasi-cabinet position, the direction of the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), with total freedom to slash government spending not to his liking.    During his tenure, Doge shut down the US Agency for International Development (USAID), leading to the termination of numerous programs tackling malnutrition, HIV and preventable diseases around the world. A study published in the Lancet found that these funding cuts could result in more than 14m deaths, including 4.5m in children younger than age five, by 2030. Great wealth is never “virtual”.    When the power of wealth is wielded by "sociopaths", the consequences are a matter of life and death. But the individual merits or kindness of billionaires are in fact irrelevant.    No one should want to live in a society where one single individual can be worth $1tn, no matter their personal virtues: such levels invariably skew power, distort markets and sap our democratic ideals.    So where do we go from there? While there is an array of policies that can constrain the power of the super-rich, any solution has to involve fixing one of the most grotesque anomalies of our time: that the super-rich often live nearly tax-free today.    A recent body of research, summarized in my book We Need to Tax Billionaires, has established that the super-rich pay very little income tax, because they find ways to report very little income. There was even one year when billionaire Jeff Bezos pretended he was so poor that he claimed – and received – the child tax credit. All of this may be legal, but it fuels the explosion of wealth and power at the top.    The most effective way to start reining in billionaires is to create an unavoidable minimum tax on their wealth. In a report commissioned from me by the G20 in 2024, I proposed a minimum tax rate equal to 2% of wealth for people with net worth above $100m. This would make it impossible for the super-rich to pay less tax than middle-class workers – a matter of basic equality before the law.    Beyond democracy and fairness, taxing billionaires would now have large budgetary implications. The flipside of the upsurge in their wealth is that the potential revenue gains from a billionaire tax are now large. A minimum tax equal to 2% of wealth for households with net wealth above 100m pounds in the UK would bring in £15bn annually – 0.5% of GDP. £15bn, from just about 1,000 families, each year.    For comparison, the fiscal savings expected from the deeply unpopular 2024 decision by the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, to scrap the winter fuel allowance for retirees were estimated at about £1.5bn annually.    It is time to break decisively with the perverse logic in which retirees and the poor are expected to balance the budget, while the rich are to be allowed to live tax-free in their own parallel society. There cannot be a law more lenient for the rich and powerful than for the rest of us. If ever there was a time to act, it is now.    * Gabriel Zucman is a professor of economics at the Paris School of Economics, research professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and founding director of the International Tax Observatory.    http://www.taxobservatory.eu/publication/a-blueprint-for-a-coordinated-minimum-effective-taxation-standard-for-ultra-high-net-worth-individuals/ http://www.theguardian.com/inequality/income-inequality http://www.theguardian.com/inequality    World Inequality Report 2026    56,000 people own three times more wealth than half of humanity, highlights Ricardo Gomez-Carrera    Consider half of the world’s adult population, about 2.8 billion people, and add up everything they own: their houses, their savings, their belongings, minus their debts. Then do the same for the 56,000 wealthiest adults on the planet, a group small enough to fit inside a single football stadium. The stadium’s wealth would be greater. In fact, the wealth of the people of the stadium would be three times as large as that of half of humanity combined.    That is one of the headline findings of the World Inequality Report 2026, which I co-authored with Lucas Chancel, Rowaida Moshrif, and Thomas Piketty, and which draws on research and data compiled by more than 200 researchers affiliated with the World Inequality Database and the World Inequality Lab.    The report’s central message is simple and astonishing: the world is extremely unequal, and at the very top, extreme wealth inequality is still rapidly increasing.    Income inequality is large, but wealth inequality is extreme    The global top 10%, about 560 million adults, earn around 53% of all global income in a given year. The bottom half of humanity, 2.8 billion people, collectively receives 8%. So, 10% of the world earns more than 6 times what half of the world earns. That alone is a striking gap.    But when you look at wealth, the picture is far more extreme. The top 10% owns three-quarters of whatever there is to own while the bottom half holds only 2%. Meanwhile, the top 1% alone controls 37% of all wealth, roughly eighteen times more than the entire bottom 50%...    http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/inequalities/2026/05/12/56000-people-own-three-times-more-wealth-than-half-of-humanity/ http://wir2026.wid.world/insight/executive-summary/ http://wir2026.wid.world/ http://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaire-wealth-jumps-three-times-faster-2025-highest-peak-ever http://www.oxfam.org/en/research/resisting-rule-rich http://www.equals.ink/p/billionaire-wealth-reaches-historic http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/inequalities/2026/01/27/democracy-at-risk-resisting-the-rule-of-the-richest/ http://www.equals.ink/p/agnes-callamard-on-rising-inequality http://www.equals.ink/p/the-great-global-wealth-transfer-thomas-piketty-on-inequality http://www.equals.ink/p/who-pays-when-countries-fall-into    http://www.icrict.com/international-tax-reform/un-ecosoc-a-blueprint-for-financial-integrity http://publicservices.international/resources/news/our-new-research-shows-global-corporate-tax-reforms-would-boost-public-revenues-by-50-?id=16364&lang=en http://www.socialprotectionfloorscoalition.org/2026/02/financing-social-protection-a-matter-of-global-justice/ http://gcap.global/news/gcap-and-147-civil-society-organisations-call-for-stronger-un-tax-convention/ http://www.icij.org/news/2026/03/irs-criminal-referrals-against-big-corporations-and-ultrawealthy-plummeted-during-trumps-first-year/    Mar. 2026    UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk at 61st session of the UN Human Rights Council (Extract):    "Inequality is the quiet force deciding the fate of millions. It dictates who eats, who learns, who gets housing and healthcare – and who does not.    Around the world, one in four people face food insecurity, and one in three lack adequate housing.    Over half the world’s population work in the informal economy, without access to paid sick leave, maternity leave, or other forms of social protection. This is particularly true for women. Nearly 60 percent of employed women work in the informal economy.    The 2030 Agenda is alarmingly off track, with many goals now slipping into reverse. Severe cuts in international development aid are projected to lead to more than 22 million avoidable deaths by 2030.    Faced with these realities, people — especially young people — have taken to the streets to demand their rights to work, to health, to education, and to be free from corruption. They are calling for economic systems that are fair, transparent, and accountable.    Their frustration reflects deep structural failures in the global economy, which continue to deepen inequalities within and between countries.    In 2024, developing countries paid a record 415 billion US dollars in interest, more than double what they paid a decade earlier.    Interest payments trap states in a spiral of under-development and shrink the resources available for health, education, social security, and other economic and social rights.    Many developing countries face the worst climate impacts despite contributing least to the crisis. Yet, those labelled as middle-income economies – including most small island developing states - are denied the concessional financing needed for climate adaptation and recovery.    Low-income countries often receive inadequate levels of debt relief, grants and concession-based finance that they desperately need.    Meanwhile, many of the richest countries under-invest in economic, social and cultural rights. Their tax systems reward the wealthy while failing to protect those who struggle.    Over the past 20 years, the richest one percent have captured 41 percent of all new wealth, while the bottom 50 percent receive just 1 percent. Last year alone, billionaires amassed enough wealth to eliminate extreme poverty twenty-six times over.    The consequences of deep inequalities within countries are devastating. Poverty, unemployment, and the lack of social protection, make people vulnerable to brutal exploitation. A recent report from our office highlighted for instance grave abuses against people trafficked into scam centres across several regions.    Commitments on financing for development need to be backed by action to enable countries to access the resources needed for sustainable development. Reform of the international financial architecture, including debt restructuring is desperately needed.    Debt servicing must not compromise international human rights obligations. States and international financial institutions should integrate human rights impact assessments systematically into their decisions on debt, in order to safeguard the fiscal space needed to realize the rights to health, education, a healthy environment, and social protection, among others. Stronger representation of developing countries in international decision-making is also crucial.    It is high time to move beyond gross domestic product as the main metric for progress. The measure of development should be whether the economy is improving people’s wellbeing and whether economic benefits are shared equitably across society.    Economic indicators should capture positive contributions to society – including the unpaid care work largely done by women, and the value added by the informal economy. And they should exclude economic activities that are harmful to human rights, such as burning fossil fuels.    Broader access to social security is a matter of justice. All States need to realise universal and legally protected social protection floors.    It is critical to expand resources for States on the frontlines of environmental damage. In an advisory opinion last year, the International Court of Justice stressed that international cooperation around climate change is a legal obligation. This includes providing enough financial support for climate action.    We cannot accept a future where a few thrive while billions are left behind. Together, we need to build economies that deliver for everyone, and make equality and justice the measure of our progress".    Mar. 2026    The manufacturing of poverty, by Olivier De Schutter - UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights    In the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, Heads of State and Government and High Representatives stated that they were determined to “end poverty and hunger, in all their forms and dimensions” by 2030 and resolved to “combat inequalities within and among countries”. These pledges will not be fulfilled.    More than a tenth of the world’s population, or 845 million people (388 million people in East and Southern Africa alone), still lived in extreme poverty in 2025, and 8.9 per cent of people will still live in extreme poverty by 2030 unless a dramatic change of course occurs.    Those figures are optimistic to the point of being misleading, since they rely on the extremely low international poverty line of $3 per day in purchasing power parity. Using the more realistic $8.20 per day in purchasing power parity, 45 per cent of the world’s population, or 3.7 billion people, would be considered to be living in extreme poverty.    Using that same measure, 89.3 per cent of the sub-Saharan African population (670 million people) live in extreme poverty today, a rate that has remained unchanged for the past 30 years.    At the same time, 2.3 billion people experienced moderate or severe food insecurity in 2024. The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis that followed the rise in energy prices in late 2021 and during the first quarter of 2022 increased this figure by 335 million people compared with 2019.    At the time of writing the present report (March 2026), Governments are bracing for what may be the worst cost-of-living crisis since the great financial crisis, as a result of the energy crisis triggered by the conflict in the Persian Gulf.    Worse, Governments are also facing what has been recognized as an “inequality emergency”: nine in ten people in the world live in countries that meet the World Bank’s threshold for high inequality (Gini coefficient above 0.4), and wealth inequality in particular has risen dramatically over the past 40 years.    In India, the top 10 per cent of earners capture about 58 per cent of national income, while the bottom 50 per cent receive only 15 per cent, and the richest 10 per cent hold around 65 per cent of total wealth (the top 1 per cent owning about 40 per cent). In the Russian Federation, the richest 10 per cent hold 75 per cent of total wealth, and the top 1 per cent alone hold 47 per cent.    In Mexico, the top 10 per cent of earners capture around 59 per cent of total income, while the bottom half receive only 8 per cent, and wealth inequalities are even larger: the richest 10 per cent hold 71 per cent of total wealth and the top 1 per cent hold about 38 per cent.    In Colombia, which has one of highest income Gini coefficients in the world (0.53), the top 10 per cent of earners capture 60 per cent of total income, while the bottom 50 per cent receive around 7 per cent, and wealth inequalities are extreme: the richest 10 per cent hold around 71 per cent of total wealth, a situation that has in fact worsened over the past decade.    The growth of income and wealth inequalities within countries is a ticking bomb. By reducing social mobility and making it more difficult for the poorest groups to overcome disadvantage, such inequalities transform societies that pride themselves on being “meritocratic” into caste-based societies; a betrayal of the ideal of equal opportunities that has far-reaching political consequences.    Indeed, it should come as no surprise that countries such as Brazil, Colombia and South Africa are taking the lead in the global fight against inequalities. In these countries with high inequality and low social mobility, it takes nine generations or more for those born in low-income families to approach the mean income in their society unless significant changes occur. The Governments of these countries understand, better perhaps than others, the huge costs of inaction because the persistence and, even worse, the growth of inequalities breed discontent and distrust towards the State. Countries with high inequality are seven times more likely to experience democratic decline than more equal countries.    Entrenched inequality worsens poverty, which is a relational concept: it is extreme material deprivation, but also the social exclusion of people who cannot meet the norms of behaviour that are expected within the society to which they belong. Inequality moreover limits opportunities to save, acquire or inherit assets. Particularly when paired with low coverage of social protection, inequality means that people experiencing poverty are rarely able to change their life trajectory.    While wealthier households can absorb external and internal shocks through accumulated assets and social networks and access to higher education that lead to better-paid employment, poorer individuals have far fewer options to manage risks or recover from crises, reinforcing the vicious cycles that perpetuate and exacerbate inequality. Inequalities also favour speculation on certain assets, particularly land and housing, from which people living in poverty are priced out.    Poverty and inequalities are manufactured. While catastrophic for the victims experiencing exclusion, they are not natural disasters: Governments can choose to address them before they happen. In what follows, the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights sets out his understanding of the challenge. He explains the role of anti-poverty strategies in this regard..    http://docs.un.org/en/A/HRC/62/42 http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/03/putting-people-balance-sheets-un-expert-calls-rights-centered-global http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/10/un-expert-demands-global-action-democratise-water-governance-and-protect http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/development-cannot-be-achieved-dying-planet-un-committee-issues-new-guidance http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/10/un-experts-urge-binding-accountability-agribusiness-safeguard-peasants http://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/a80213-corporate-power-and-human-rights-food-systems-report-special http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/12/kenyas-seed-sharing-ruling-milestone-peasants-rights-and-food-security-un http://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/ahrc5848-right-food-finance-and-national-action-plans-report-special http://ipes-food.org/industrial-food-system-failing-as-un-finds-733-million-still-hungry/ http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/02/fair-and-effective-tax-policies-needed-advance-economic-social-and-cultural http://www.cesr.org/states-adopt-un-resolution-to-further-rights-enabling-economic-policies/    A Plan for Equality & Prosperity within Planetary Boundaries: The Global Justice Report from the World Inequality Lab    Imagine a future in which everyone enjoys high levels of wellbeing; where 90% of the world’s population doubles their income but works half the hours we work today. A world in which the bottom half of humanity sees its share of global wealth rise from just 2% today to 30%; a world where we consume enough, but nobody over-consumes. And imagine achieving this on a planet that can comfortably sustain human life without its climate breaking down.    Against the bleak techno-authoritarian futures now being sold to us, a radical new vision for global progress in the 21st century feels urgently needed. The most credible vision is one in which the habitability of the planet is a precondition for human development and equality.    Our new report examines the conditions required for the world to progress towards this ambition on an economically and ecologically compatible path, by the end of the century.    Its conclusion? A global transformation that reconciles planetary habitability and high standards of wellbeing for all is possible – as long as three conditions are simultaneously met.    Fast decarbonisation of energy systems is necessary. But we also need a major shift away from overconsumption towards “sufficiency”. This would involve a sharp reduction in labour hours and the use of raw materials, along with big changes in consumption patterns, food habits, land use and forest cover.    Financing and politically sustaining decarbonisation and sufficiency will require a drastic reduction in inequality of income, wealth and power, between countries and within them. This reduction of global inequality is compatible with deep decarbonisation; indeed, it is a necessary condition for shared prosperity on a finite planet.    The Global Justice Report is the first attempt to propose a fully quantified plan for this transition. It combines four dimensions that today’s debates often treat separately: redistribution at the world scale; a deep reform of the international financial and economic order; a radical transformation of energy systems; and substantial shifts in consumption patterns.    Compared with most climate scenarios (including those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), the main novelty is that we model all four dimensions together – and place inequality and sufficiency at the centre of the analysis.    What would this transition deliver? At its heart is convergence between countries. Average per capita national income, today separated by a 16-fold gap between the poorest (€290 a month in sub-Saharan Africa) and richest (€4,590 in North America/Oceania) regions of the world, would rise towards a common level of about €5,000 a month in all countries by 2100.    But this convergence is not just monetary. Annual working hours per employed person would fall from roughly 2,100 to about 1,000, continuing the long shift towards shorter working time; while the share of global working hours devoted to education and health would rise from 11% to 43%. Women and men would converge on equal pay and on an equal share of economic and domestic labour.    All of this would unfold within a habitable climate. Thanks to sustainable convergence and fast decarbonisation, global heating would reach 1.8C, against more than 4C on current trends.    None of this will be possible without a deep contraction of inequality. The income scale between individuals would narrow to a ratio of one to five and the wealth scale to one to 10, prolonging what western and Nordic Europe achieved over the 20th century.    The share of global wealth held by the poorest half of humanity would rise from 2% to 30%, while the share held by the billionaire class would fall from 6% to 0.05%.    These shifts would be financed and governed through new institutions. A global justice fund would spend an average of 10% of world GDP a year from 2026 to 2060 on country dividends and investment, against the less than 0.4% that aid and the combined budgets of the UN, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank represent today.    Its resources would come from a world sovereign fund holding 10% of the world capital stock, a global wealth tax rising to 20% a year on billionaires and a global income tax rising to 90% at the very top, each touching about 1% of the world’s population.    The result is not a transfer from many to few but a gain for almost everyone. Close to 90% of the world’s population would double their income between 2026 and 2100, and once leisure and a habitable planet are counted, more than 99% come out ahead.    The plan also redistributes power. Today, the richest regions hold four times as many votes at the IMF and World Bank as their share of the world’s population would dictate; in the new order, every inhabitant would have equal voice, backed by an international clearing union and a new international currency to end the exorbitant privileges of the dominant powers and to address global trade imbalances.    Our report is part of a broader international agenda for planetary habitability, social justice and reform of the global financial architecture – including the Bridgetown agenda launched by Barbados in 2022, the Sevilla Commitment on development finance, the UN tax convention process, and G20 initiatives led by Brazil and South Africa on global inequality.    The main contribution of this report is to place these proposals within a quantified institutional framework, modelling socioeconomic convergence, temperature change and distributional trajectories up to the year 2100.    A habitable, equal and prosperous 21st century is materially possible. The carbon budget allows it and history offers precedents at comparable scales: universal suffrage, the universalisation of healthcare and education, the halving of working hours and the sharp compression of inequality over the 20th century.    Technical impossibility is not what is standing in the way, but rather the absence of a shared vision of social progress, at once concrete and radical. What it will take instead is political choice, and the hard work of coalition-building behind it.    * Thomas Piketty is a professor of economics at the Paris School of Economics and co-director of the World Inequality Lab; Lucas Chancel is professor of economics at Sciences Po Paris and co-director of the World Inequality Lab; Cornelia Mohren is environmental coordinator at the World Inequality Lab; Rowaida Moshrif is co-director at the World Inequality Lab; Moritz Odersky is an economist at the World Inequality Lab; Anmol Somanchi is global justice coordinator at the World Inequality Lab.    http://globaljusticeproject.wid.world/insight/summary/ http://globaljusticeproject.wid.world Visit the related web page
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