The new report of the laboratory on global inequalities, published on Tuesday, December 7, unveils an unprecedented radiograph of income and wealth disparities since the nineteenth century, but also women’s income gaps and carbon emissions according to classes. social.
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This is probably the biggest challenge for the coming decades: how to reconcile ecological transition and social justice? The French movement of “yellow vests”, triggered in November 2018 by an increase in carbon tax, emphasized the extreme sensitivity of our societies on the subject. Because these are weakened by multiple inequalities, monetary, educational or in access to care, as brutally recalled the pandemic of Covid-19.
The new report, published on Tuesday, December 7 by the Laboratory on World Inequalities (World Inequality Lab, Wil), led by economists Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, brings a new light on these issues, Also revealing that the CVIV-19 crisis has exacerbated a little more the capture of global wealth by the most fortunate.
Fruit of the work of a hundred economists from all continents, he presents the most searched study to date in more than one hundred countries, built from multiple sources, including data from national accounts and Tax data. It completes the first report published in 2017, in the wake of Thomas Piketty’s bestseller, the capital in the XXI e century, published in 2013.
Despite the difficulty of gathering statistics, particularly in emerging countries, WIL researchers have been a strong database on global inequalities ( WID.WORLD ) to compare the heterogeneous situations from different continents. Their new report provides a historical X-ray to seize income disparities as well assets since 1820, as well as unpublished gender inequalities and carbon emissions.
If the excesses of financial globalization partially explain the digging of the gaps observed in recent decades, the authors insist on a point: inequalities are not inequality. “Their degree is not determined by geography or development levels,” they explain. “It is basically the result of the political choices.” That is, arbitrations made in terms of taxation and public policies, that the ecological transition today requires to review.
- Inequalities culminate at historically high levels within countries
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