Tackling Inequality: The Role of Business
Increasing economic inequality has emerged as one of the defining issues of our time. Describe how it is affecting people.
Inequality polarizes populations and concentrates power, threatening social stability and democracy in both direct and subtle ways. Oxfam recently reported that 42 individuals now have the same wealth as the bottom 50 per cent of the world’s population. Furthermore, 82 per cent of all economic growth created in 2017 went to the richest one per cent of the population, while the poorest 50 per cent saw no increase at all. In the U.S., things have been even more extreme, with 95 per cent of the income growth between 2009 and 2012 going to the wealthiest one per cent.
The U.S. is not even the most unequal country: Chile and Mexico having the highest levels of inequality in the world, while Estonia has shown the most rapid recent increase. Societies with higher levels of inequality have higher levels of both social and health problems, including higher crime and violence rates, greater degrees of mistrust and increased levels of obesity and mental illness.
Researchers have demonstrated that it is not income levels per se that predict health and social problems. What is it, then?
Differences within countries are as important as levels of income. In other words, there are two major ways for health
