balance sheets were not available for the 2000 survey.
Household wealth is unevenly distributed across the world. A huge proportion is concentrated in the hands of a very few.
The bar chart below displays the distribution of wealth across the world. Each group of bars represents a tenth (a decile) of the world’s adult population (370 million), from the poorest decile on the left, to the wealthiest decile on the right. The colors indicate in which regions of the world people in different wealth deciles live. Latin America has a fairly equal number of adults in each wealth decile, indicating that wealth is quite evenly distributed. The bars for Africa vary more in height, indicating unequally distributed wealth, with the majority of people in the poorest deciles. The bars for North America also range widely in height, but the majority of people are in the richest deciles. The single bar on the right, represents the wealthiest 370 million adults in the world, and is divided up to indicate which countries they inhabit.
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R Inequalities in global spending are stark. The richest fifth of the world’s population are responsible for 77 percent of all spending by households on goods and services, and the poorest fifth a miniscule 1.5 percent – a distribution that has barely changed since the mid-1990s. For a household to have an adequate standard of living, it needs to spend money on food, clothing, housing, medical care, and education. However, many poor households are forced to spend a large share – an average of over 50 percent in many low-income countries – of their income on food alone. By contrast, in high-income, industrialized countries, expenditure on food might represent only 10 percent of household income, although the actual amount spent may be more than 10 times greater than the amount spent by those in poorer countries.
Consumption
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People face deprivation even in industrialized countries, where more than 100 million people are reported homeless. In the USA, where more food is consumed per person than anywhere else in the world, nearly 7 million households reported going hungry at some point during 2008. In non-industrialized countries, about a fifth of all people are undernourished, and a quarter do not have adequate housing. Ownership of household assets such as refrigerators, televisions, cell phones and cars is concentrated in the wealthiest groups. Raising the consumption levels of more than a billion poor people is as important as moving towards sustainable consumption patterns that reduce environmental damage and promote product safety and the rights of consumers.
Poor households have to spend most of their income on food, with little left for other purposes.
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R Around the globe, there are differences in the ways labor is mobilized, the productivity of that work, and the lives work makes possible through its remuneration. Coercive forms of work, notably slavery, forced labor and debt bondage, have declined in the last 200 years. The number of people employed in agriculture has declined as a result of mechanization and the increasing number of jobs in manufacturing, mining, power generation, and construction. More recently, the more “advanced” economies have moved away from the manufacture of goods, towards the provision of services such as marketing, finance, and legal expertise. A comparison of the proportion of people employed in agriculture, industry and services, and the contribution those sectors make to a country’s GDP, reveals the contribution made by workers in each sector to the economy.
Work & Unemployment
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Most people in industrialized economies work in formal, contracted, regulated employment, but in most developing countries the majority work informally, in unregulated work, producing and selling goods on a small scale. The nature of this work makes reliable data hard to find. Unemployment is a major source of inequality and deprivation, particularly throughout most of the non-industrial world, where there is little support for the unemployed. Unemployment levels have risen dramatically since the onset of the recession in 2007, but global data on this change is not yet available. Work provides more than remuneration. It may, for example, bestow status. Gender differences in the level of unemployment often reflect power inequalities – most strikingly in the Middle East.
Differences in livelihoods, remuneration, unemployment, and underemployment create considerable inequalities.
40–41 Gender R
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R People migrate to seek higher incomes, better work, access to higher education, and better healthcare. Labor migration leads to the expansion of human freedoms, so it can reduce global inequality. It has been suggested that migration could be an alternative to foreign aid. People from countries with the least development (measured by HDI) often have the most to gain from labor migration. Those who have the most to gain from migration, however, are least likely, or able, to migrate. Poverty is a significant constraint to emigration. Those in the poorest countries, and the poorest people within countries, are less able to migrate and, despite high demand for their low-skilled labor, encounter numerous barriers to their migration.
Labor Migration
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Those who do migrate achieve higher incomes than those who stay home. They are able to send money home as remittances, which directly increases opportunities and freedoms for their families. Globally, the money that migrants send home is more than twice as large as foreign aid, and for many countries remittances are the largest source of foreign exchange. Not everyone who migrates does so for economic purposes. Conflict-induced migration and forced migration also contribute to the overall flows of labor migration. There were some 42 million forcibly displaced people worldwide at the end of 2008.
Each year millions of people move within their own country and between countries in search of better-paid or more secure work. Labor migration can help address global inequalities.
40–41 Gender
42–43 Age R
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