The American Political Science Association

Report Materials

Things You Didn't Know About Global Inequality But Should

Highlights include:

If the world were a country, it would rank near the very bottom of a list of the most unequal countries.
In 2000 the top 10% of adults in the world owned 85% of global household wealth, while the bottom half owned barely 1%.
Only five countries received 74% of the estimated $94 billion in portfolio equity flows to developing countries in 2005.
In 1980, the richest 1% of the world population earned 216 times the poorest 1%. By 2000, this had ballooned to 415 times the earnings of the poorest 1%.
On average, the United States has imposed tariffs on imports from developing countries that are more than three times higher than its tariffs on imports from developed countries.
European cows—each with an implicit income of $2.50 a day from government subsidies—have higher incomes than one-third of the world’s people.
The U.S. and E.U. sell half of the world’s wheat exports at prices 46% and 34% below the costs of production, respectively.
Developing countries were twice as likely to suffer from a financial crisis—averaging one every 5.4 years.

List derived from The Persistent Problem: Inequality, Difference, and the Challenge of Development, a report of the Task Force on Difference, Inequality, and Developing Societies of the American Political Science Association (2008).