3.7B - Trends, Winners and Losers
Trends in widening income inequality, globally and nationally (measured using the Gini Coefficient), suggest globalisation has created winners and losers for people and physical environments between and within developed, emerging and developing economies.
A 2016 report from Oxfam stated that the wealth of the world's richest 1% of people is equivalent to the wealth of the other 99%. This degree of income inequality is not new, but may have become starker in the last few decades. Within countries inequality is measured using the Gini coefficient with income divided into quintiles (20% intervals) plotted as a Lorenz curve.
Haiti is the most unequal country as the richest 20% of people have 65% of the wealth, compared to 36% in Sweden.
Mexico is in between with the richest 20% owning 55% of wealth.
Sweden, Mexico and Haiti have all experience globalisation to some degree, but the outcome is that Mexico and Haiti are more unequal than Sweden.
Winners:
- There were about 1800 billionaires worldwide in 2016; most have made their wealth through ownership of global TNCs
- Developed countries have proven very good at maintaining their wealth, despite the rise of emerging countries like China
- The rising middle class of factory and call centre workers in Asia, whose incomes have risen as they have gained outsources and offshored jobs.
- People who work for TNCs in developed countries who have a high income and reasonable job security, although they lead high-stress lives.
Losers
- Isolated, rural populations in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa where subsistence farming still dominates and global connections are thin.
- Workers (especially male ones) in old industrial cities in the developed world who have generally lost jobs.
- Workers in sweatshop factories in emerging countries; they suffer exploitation (but may still be better off than in the rural areas they migrated from)
- Slum dwellers in developing world cities like Lagos, as the reality of urban life is often much worse than they expected.