What does the future of global inequality look like? Once again, it depends on who you ask. There are trends that emerge as we look historically. Understanding these trends, we can make projections about how global inequality might shift in the future. We can see developments related to where wealth and poverty is concentrated, and we can identify strategies for intervening. This section will explore a few of those themes.

Projections

The UN World Social Report 2020: Inequality in a Rapidly Changing World points to four megatrends we are seeing that contribute to global inequality: technological innovation, international migration, climate change, and urbanization. For example, the authors explain that “technological change can be an engine of economic growth, offering new possibilities in health care, education, communication, and productivity. But it can also exacerbate wage inequality and displace workers” (UNDESA 2020:5).

“Brain drain,” or human capital flight, is the emigration of highly trained or intelligent people from a particular country. This is one way that workers are displaced as technology advances. Some thinkers argue that the loss of highly trained people from poorer countries may cause problems for the home country. For in spite of the investments made in education (figure 4.29), those emigrants are not available to contribute to improving the quality of life at home.

Climate change impacts the poorest countries most impacted by social inequality. Oxfam projects that hundreds of millions of people will still be living in extreme poverty by 2030. The poorest people will increasingly be concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa (Seery and Seghers 2019). Urbanization plays a role in inequality as people emigrate to cities in hopes that their quality of life will improve (UNDESA 2020). However, economic inequality is generally greater in urban areas than in rural areas.

The 1 Percent and Gender

Sociologists and other professionals have been studying both types of global inequality (within and between countries) for decades. Recently, however, an extreme concentration of wealth has developed in the world. In 2019, the world’s billionaires—only 2,153 people—had more wealth than 4.6 billion people (Coffey 2020). Together, individuals in this income bracket have been coined the 1 percent: those at the top of the income and wealth distributions in the world. Researchers at Oxfam report that 2020 to 2023 saw the 1 percent capture almost two-thirds of all new wealth – nearly twice as much money as the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population (Martin-Brehm et al. 2023). This was an acceleration seen during 2020 and 2021, the first two COVID-19 pandemic years, during which many people were in a cost-of-living crisis.

It’s hard to imagine yet what that means for global inequality. However, there are some insights related to social location to explore. In Oxfam’s 2020 report, Time to Care, the organization presents inequality with an intersectional lens that focuses on the 1 percent and gender. The report shows that our current economies enable a wealthy elite to accumulate vast fortunes at the expense of ordinary people, particularly poor women and girls. The report explained the degree of inequality in this way:

The 22 richest men in the world have more wealth than all the women in Africa.…This great divide is based on a flawed and sexist economic system that values the wealth of the privileged few, mostly men, more than the billions of hours of the most essential work—the unpaid and underpaid care work done primarily by women and girls around the world (Coffey 2020).

There is a long standing trend, in almost all societies, for women to have higher rates of poverty than men. More women and girls live in poor conditions, receive inadequate healthcare, bear the brunt of malnutrition and inadequate drinking water, and so on. This situation goes back decades and led University of Michigan sociologist Diana Pearce in 1978 to coin the phrase “feminization of poverty.”

Why is this happening? While many variables affect women’s poverty, research has identified three causes:

1. The expansion in the number of households headed by women
2. Inequalities and biases against women that occur within households
3. The implementation of free-market economic policies with limited government intervention (Moghadam 2005)

While women are living longer and healthier lives today compared to 10 years ago, around the world many women are denied basic rights, particularly in the workplace. In peripheral countries, they accumulate fewer assets, farm less land, make less money, and face restricted civil rights and liberties. When women are able to attain higher levels of education, they account for significant economic growth within their countries (OECD 2012). However, they are often undereducated and lack access to credit needed to start small businesses. A wide range of organizations undertake programs or provide support in order to improve opportunity, safety, education, equality, and positive financial outcomes for women.

The Fair Trade Movement

It is likely that you have seen the words “fair trade” at grocery stores or artisan shops. These often are certification labels that indicate that a product was fairly produced and fairly traded. Also known as “alternative trade,” the principles of fair trade have their origins in the ancient cultural values of Indigenous communities—namely, the values of solidarity, reciprocity, and collaboration that have been crucial to their production of food, shelter, and survival.

The modern notion of fair trade is a movement and alternative way of trading goods. It emerged to respond to the negative effects of globalization on economically vulnerable people in poorer countries. Consultant Manel Modelo explains, “…the current economic system is socially unjust, as well as inefficient in its distribution of resources…. For people who hold this view, fair trade is a powerful way to highlight the contradictions of the current system” (Modelo 2013).

Initiated in Europe in the 1960s, fair trade has grown to become an international household word associated with a multitude of products. For example, fair trade coffee is offered by Equal Exchange, clothing by Patagonia. The fair trade cosmetic company LUSH works with the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó in Colombia we introduced in Chapter 1. The community sells LUSH the cacao they grow on their territory, and LUSH processes it into products for retail (figure 4.30). The LUSH company website describes the fair trade concept:

Put simply, fair trade means buying goods at a fair price from people who produce them. In exchange, producers use sustainable production practices and uphold fair working standards for their employees, benefiting both the earth and the communities involved (“What Is Fair Trade?” n.d.).

Not all fair trade producers live in conflict zones. But for the Peace Community, this arrangement supports them by providing a steady source of income, as sometimes paramilitary presence prevents them from transporting their cacao to the local market. It also provides the Peace Community international visibility for their struggle.

Critics of fair trade point to the challenges of monitoring the established fair trade standards and the concern that increased profits are collected by businesses or leaders of producer groups. However, it appears that many consumers are comfortable supporting people who live in poverty with their purchase choices by paying higher prices for fair trade products (Winter et al. 2006).

Fair trade is an example of grassroots initiatives that attempt to offset the impacts of inequality that arise from globalization. Two frontrunning organizations in the fair trade world share how the strategy responds to the inequalities that arise with globalization and the global market system. CEO of Fair Trade USA Paul Rice explains that between 2004 and 2014, his organization delivered over $220 million in additional market value to farming communities they partnered with. CEO of Fairtrade Harriet Lamb believes that fair trade is about “enabling consumers to buy responsibly, enabling producers to farm responsibly, [and] pushing companies to trade responsibly” (Modelo 2013).

What will be the consequences of these global trends and projections? On one hand, there’s good reason to be concerned about increasing disparities and divisions. On the other hand, professionals and activists see ways that we can work with these social changes to encourage a more equitable and sustainable world. In Chapter 5, we’ll explore what we’ve learned from decades of humanitarian and aid work that can help us move further in that direction.

Licenses and Attributions for Trends in Global Inequality

Open Content, Original

“Trends in Global Inequality” by Aimee Samara Krouskop is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Open Content, Shared Previously

Figure 4.29. Teenagers in Samoa return home from school is on Flickr, by Simon_sees, and is licensed under CC BY-2.0.

All Rights Reserved Content

Figure 4.30. Screenshots from the video, “Lush Buying Presents: Cocoa Butter” by Lush Leaks is licensed under the Standard YouTube License.