Grotesque Inequalities

Grotesque Inequality: Corporate Globalization and the Global Gap Between Rich and Poor

By Robert Weissman

There is something profoundly wrong with a world in which the 400 highest income earners in the United States make as much money in a year as the entire population of 20 African nations -- more than 300 million people.

Global inequalities persist at staggering levels. The richest 10 percent of the world's population's income is roughly 117 times higher than the poorest 10 percent, according to calculations performed by economists at the Economics Policy Institute, using data from the International Monetary Fund. This is a huge jump from the ratio in 1980, when the income of the richest 10 percent was about 79 times higher than the poorest 10 percent. MORE>>

Left Behind: Domestic Inequalities and the Fate of the Poor

By the United Nations Development Program

Even for countries that on average have made good progress towards the Millennium Development Goals designed to cut in half the worst manifestations of global poverty, domestic inequality often runs high. In countries throughout the world, both where economies are growing and where they are stagnant, there are plentiful examples of increasing or lingering gaps -- where entire areas or groups (or both) have been left behind in one or more spheres of development. MORE>>

Inequality in the World Economy — By the Numbers

An Interview with Branko Milanovic

Branko Milanovic is lead economist in the World Bank research group and visiting professor at the School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He has conducted cutting-edge research on the scale of inequality in the world economy. MORE>>

Losing the Farm: How Corporate Globalization Pushes Millions Off the Land and Into Desperation

An Interview with Anuradha Mittal

Anuradha Mittal, a native of India, is the co-director of Food First/The Institute for Food and Development Policy. Prior to becoming co-director, she was the Institute's policy director and coordinated Economic Human Rights: The Time Has Come!, a national campaign in the United States on growing hunger and poverty and the loss of family farms in the United States. Mittal is the co-editor of America Needs Human Rights (Food First Books, 1999). Prior coming to the United States, Mittal worked with Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), a major development group in India. MORE>>