SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities Dynamic Briefing Generated 09 October 2020 for Marco Antonio Gonzalez
SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities Last review on Tue 03 September 2019
About This dynamic briefing draws on the collective intelligence of the Forum network to explore the key trends, interconnections and interdependencies between industry, regional and global issues. In the briefing, you will find a visual representation of this topic (Transformation Map – interactive version available online via intelligence.weforum.org ), an overview and the key trends affecting it, along with summaries and links to the latest research and analysis on each of the trends. Briefings for countries also include the relevant data from the Forum’s benchmarking indices. The content is continuously updated with the latest thinking of leaders and experts from across the Forum network, and with insights from Forum meetings, projects communities and activities.
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Executive summary This Transformation Map provides a contextual briefing for one of the Sustainable Development Goals the United Nations’ framework for making real progress towards a more sustainable future by the year 2030 - by mapping related strategic issues and interdependencies. The content, including attached key issue headings and texts, is drawn from expert- and machine-curated knowledge on the World Economic Forum’s Strategic Intelligence platform; it is not a reproduction of the official text of the SDG. The UN introduces this Goal as follows: 'The international community has made significant strides towards lifting people out of poverty. The most vulnerable nations – the least developed countries, the landlocked developing countries and the small island developing states – continue to make inroads into poverty reduction. However, inequality persists and large disparities remain regarding access to health and education services and other assets. There is growing consensus that economic growth is not sufficient to reduce poverty if it is not inclusive and if it does not involve the three dimensions of sustainable development – economic, social and environmental. Fortunately, income inequality has been reduced both between and within countries. At the current time, the per capita income of 60 out of 94 countries with data has risen more rapidly than the national average. There has been some progress regarding creating favorable access conditions for exports from least developing countries as well. To reduce inequality, policies should be universal in principle, paying attention to the needs of disadvantaged and marginalized populations. There needs to be an increase in duty-free treatment and continuation of favoring exports from developing countries, in addition to increasing the share of developing countries’ vote within the IMF. Finally, innovations in technology can help reduce the cost of transferring money for migrant workers.'
1. Access to Law and Justice
7. Inclusive Growth
Many people lack access to legal services and protections, in both poor and wealthy countries.
A failure to improve living standards and reduce inequality has worsened social divides.
2. Housing, Wealth and Affordability
8. Pathways to Equality
Rising home prices have contributed to increased wealth inequality.
Even as the global middle class expands, wealth disparities within countries have worsened.
3. Inequality Wealth inequality is worsening, and new technologies threaten to aggravate that trend.
4. Inequality and Uneven Development Inequality is driving migration, as poorer populations become better connected.
5. Valuing Human Dignity Inequality is only getting worse, and exacting a heavy toll on dignity.
6. Globalization Too many people have been left behind by globalization, creating increased polarization.
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Access to Law and Justice Many people lack access to legal services and protections, in both poor and wealthy countries The United Nations has estimated that approximately one billion people - a significant portion of the current global population of 7.7 billion - are legally “invisible” in the sense that they cannot prove who they are officially and retain related legal protections. This lack of access to legal information and institutional assistance puts the dignity, safety, and security of large numbers of people at risk. A lack of access to functioning legal infrastructure, for example, can have significant related impacts on access to healthcare and education - and can restrict individual economic development. This dynamic was recognized in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, established in 2015 to provide a roadmap for a more sustainable global economy by 2030 (goal 16, for example, includes a target of ensuring access to justice for all). Tangible international commitments to build the infrastructure necessary to enable security more broadly and meet these legal needs are therefore critical. Ensuring access to justice, legal advice, legal institutions, and forensic science is a global need. This challenge takes different forms in different places, but is critical in both poor and wealthy countries. In the US, for example, as many as 90% of the people who find themselves in court in some states go without adequate legal representation, due in part to the high costs of legal fees. Meanwhile the United Kingdom, which has historically provided comprehensive criminal legal aid based on the founding principle that all citizens should have equitable access to public services, has seen large cutbacks. Government spending in the UK on legal aid is reported to have been cut by more than £1 billion since 2012, the number of people receiving advice or assistance in social welfare matters has dropped by 90%, and the number of defendants appearing in court without legal advice or representation has increased significantly. Trust in the justice system is foundational for security and stability in any country. Ensuring access to legal advice and infrastructure that operates in a transparent and robust way remains a critical challenge for both ensuring that trust, and for achieving peaceful and inclusive societies. This requires not only the careful consideration of resources, but also reform of the current oversight of justice systems. Related insight areas: Public Finance and Social Protection, Values, Digital Identity, Education and Skills, Inclusive Design, Global Health, Sustainable Development, Gender Parity, Human Rights, Global Governance, Systemic Racism
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Latest knowledge World Economic Forum
World Resources Institute
Social justice, inclusion and sustainable development need a ‘Great Reset’. Here are 3 key steps we can take
Mining Threatens 20% of Indigenous Lands in the Amazon 07 October 2020
08 October 2020 New WRI research shows that legal large-scale mining concessions and illegal mining areas overlap with more than 20% of Indigenous land in the Amazon.
Widespread environmental crises and global Black Lives Matters protests have sparked palpable restlessness for change. This is how we should respond.
Business and Human Rights Resource Centre
Reset: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society
Europe’s new law to end corporate abuse should learn from Obama's legacy
08 October 2020
07 October 2020
GovLab - Living Library
Book by Ronald Deibert: “Digital technologies have given rise to a new machine-based civilization that is increasingly linked to a growing number of social and political maladies. Accountability is weak and insecurity is endemic, creating disturbing opportunities for exploitation. Drawing from the cutting-edge research of the Citizen Lab, the world-renowned digital security research group which he founded and directs, Ronald J. Deibert exposes the impacts of this communications ecosystem on civil society. He tracks a mostly unregulated surveillance industry, innovations in technologies of remote control, superpower policing practices, dark PR firms, and highly profitable hack-for-hire services feeding off rivers of poorly secured personal data.
For those in Europe seeking evidence that robust due diligence laws work both to end abuse in business and promote prevention, there are powerful lessons to learn from the new assertiveness of the Forced Labour Division of the Customs and Border Patrol. Land Portal
Sahar Jallad on indigenous land rights and COVID-19 06 October 2020 Sahar Jallad shares her views on how indigenous land rights can contribute to improved public health, climate change, and biodiversity, or a 'green recovery.
Global Investigative Journalism Network
Chatham House
Investigating the Police: Reporting Tips & Tools
Imagine a world without violent conflict 05 October 2020
08 October 2020 Police forces are supposed to uphold the law and protect citizens from violence. However, all too often the police themselves are corrupt and violent, even in countries that claim to be democratic. Investigating cases of official misconduct, corruption and aggression, and challenging official narratives, stand at the heart of investigative journalism. In addition, journalists not only frequently rely on police accounts as primary sources but at times are themselves victims of excessive force and detention by police and other security forces. In this global GIJN webinar, “Investigating the Police: Reporting Tips and Tools,” co-organized with the African Investigative Journalism Conference, we bring together four experienced journalists: two from Africa and two from outside the continent, who have investigated law enforcement.
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Housing, Wealth and Affordability Rising home prices have contributed to increased wealth inequality The global inflation of real estate prices has helped shine a spotlight on broader issues related to housing affordability, wealth inequality, and inclusive economic growth. Due in part to the upward creep of home prices relative to income levels in many markets around the world, central bankers and other policy-makers have sought to put measures in place to ease the financial pain for potential buyers. While corresponding efforts must be made to prevent a resulting onset of housing bubbles, and ensure that people do not accumulate excessive debt, property must be recognized as an important means for people from all backgrounds to potentially gain wealth. In Europe, for example, research has shown that wealth based on the value of real estate assets has been increasing at a far faster rate than income levels. The economist Thomas Piketty among others has warned that this trend in combination with existing housing policies have created a dynamic in Europe where mostly only those “insiders” with access to family wealth have been able to access property, as high house prices increasingly limit access for “outsiders.” Meanwhile in China, according research published by the Beijing Normal University Business School, the country’s Gini coefficient - a measure of wealth inequality - increased by more than a third between 2002 and 2012 due in large part to rapidly rising real estate prices. And in the US, the collapse of housing prices after the financial crisis has been shown to have sharply decreased the wealth held by middleclass households, even as a relatively quick stock market rebound gave a boost to the wealthiest households due to their investments in equities. Also in the US, disparities in housing wealth have formed along racial lines; a report published in 2020 showed that the typical resident of an urban area in the US historically “redlined” for lenders due at least in part to being home to people of colour had gained 52% less in personal wealth generated by property value increases over the previous 40 years than a resident of a better-rated area. The ability to accumulate wealth through property ownership depends in part on access to financing and mortgage products, and government intervention can help ensure both. Related insight areas: Financial and Monetary Systems, Cities and Urbanization, Taxation, Public Finance and Social Protection, Private Investors, Global Risks, Systemic Racism, Institutional Investors, Sustainable Development
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Latest knowledge Center for Global Development
VoxEU
New DAC Rules on Debt Relief – A Poor Measure of Donor Effort
The role of beliefs on social and communal insurance
07 October 2020
02 October 2020
The Development Assistance Committee (DAC) recently produced a long-awaited set of rules for how debt relief on loans should be scored as Official Development Assistance (ODA). Unfortunately, the rules suffer from a number of statistical problems and the DAC needs to take these rules back to the drawing board, or lose credibility.
Household portfolios in the euro area differ systematically between countries. As a result, ECB policies have asymmetric effects and views on a potential EU financial transaction tax are divergent. This column argues that cross-country variation in portfolio structures is due to variation in country-specific beliefs on social and communal insurance. These beliefs lead to differences in subjective expectations regarding the availability of external support during financial distress. This means that they regulate the extent to which households use their portfolios for self-insurance, as well as their readiness to participate in debt markets.
Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania - Knowledge@Wharton
What Drives Household Bankruptcy? 06 October 2020 New research by Wharton’s Sasha Indarte suggests that people file for bankruptcy not because of what they gain in debt relief, but because they lack cash on hand.
Brookings
Corporate bond market dysfunction during COVID-19 and lessons from the Fed’s response
Project Syndicate
The Stock-Market Disconnect
01 October 2020
05 October 2020
The investment-grade corporate bond market, which functioned well in the global financial crisis, did not in the COVID-19 crisis, and required aggressive emergency intervention by the Federal Reserve.
The best explanation for why stock markets remain so bullish despite a massive recession is that major publicly traded companies have not borne the brunt of the pandemic's economic fallout. But having been spared by the virus, they could soon find themselves squarely in the sights of a populist backlash.
The Economist
Project Syndicate
Booming house prices spell more trouble for the social contract
A Multicolored New Deal
01 October 2020
02 October 2020
Stockmarkets have not had a good September, but their strength for the year as a whole remains a source of wonderment. Less noticed has been the equally remarkable buoyancy of another asset class: housing. Many rich countries are seeing house prices surge even as their rate of infections is rising for a second time. In the second quarter, although economies were under lockdown, house prices rose in eight out of ten high- and middle-income countries.
The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified socioeconomic disparities between and within countries around the world, offering a disturbing preview of what awaits us on a warming planet. To get ahead of both current and looming crises, the world must commit to a recovery agenda that is not only green, but also blue, purple, and red.
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Inequality Wealth inequality is worsening, and new technologies threaten to aggravate that trend Worsening inequality, and a corresponding negative impact on social stability, is one of the greatest potential risks associated with the technology innovation propelling the Fourth Industrial Revolution. While new technologies can democratize access to employment and entrepreneurial opportunities, not to mention education and knowledge, the tendency of new global technology platforms to dominate winner-takes-all markets could exacerbate inequality and social fragmentation. According to the 2017 edition of the Global Wealth Report published by Credit Suisse, total global wealth increased 27% over the course of the prior decade, and slightly more than half of all of the household wealth in the world was owned by just 1% of the global population (when the current millennium had begun, 45.5% of total global wealth was owned by the top 1%, according to the report). Even within the member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, as of 2011 the average income of the richest 10% of their populations was about nine times that of the poorest 10%. Inequality within most countries is getting worse, even in places that have enjoyed rapid economic growth across income groups and corresponding declines in poverty.
Related insight areas: Mental Health, Gender Parity, Justice and Law, Public Finance and Social Protection, Digital Communications, Future of Economic Progress, Values, Sustainable Development, Workforce and Employment, Taxation
Rising inequality is an economic and a social concern. In their 2009 book The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, British epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett published data indicating that unequal societies tend to be more violent, to have higher numbers of incarcerated citizens, to experience greater levels of mental illness and obesity, and to have lower life expectancy. More equal societies, meanwhile, have higher levels of child well-being, lower levels of stress and drug use, and lower rates of infant mortality. The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2018 showed strong interconnections between rising income disparity, unemployment or underemployment, and profound social instability. A more digitally-connected world has created higher expectations, which can generate significant social risk if people feel they have no chance to attain the prosperity they see others enjoying. If the Fourth Industrial Revolution does result in greater social exclusion, it may make it even more difficult to find meaning in the modern world - and it may create further disenchantment with established elites and power structures. This could further motivate extremist movements, and augment their recruitment efforts.
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Latest knowledge VoxEU
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
Robots replace routine tasks performed by workers
“The Long Ascent”: 4 Key Cornerstones for Global Economic Recovery
08 October 2020
06 October 2020 Rapid improvements in robot capabilities have fuelled concerns about the implications for jobs. This column examines the effect robots have had on jobs in industries across high-income and emerging countries from 2005 to 2015. The rise in robot adoption relates to a fall in the employment share of occupations that are intensive in routine tasks. This relation is observed in high-income countries, but not in emerging market and transition economies.
The global economy is coming back from the depths of the crisis, but this calamity is far from over. all countries are now facing what i would call “the long ascent”— a difficult climb that will be long, uneven and uncertain. Prone to setbacks. as we embark on this "ascent," we are all joined by a single rope — and we are only as strong as the weakest climbers. they will need help on the way up.
EOS
Observer Research Foundation
Tackling 21st Century Geoscience Problems with Machine Learning
Governance through the digital disruption of democracy
07 October 2020
05 October 2020
What are the principle controls on the climate? How can we anticipate and mitigate the effects of geohazards? What is in the Earth’s subsurface? When is the next large earthquake likely to occur? Such questions – which are easy to ask but more difficult to answer – are at the heart of modern geoscience.
Democracies run on trust. Citizens need to trust that they have truthful information, that their governments will protect them, and that their votes matter. Digital technologies are undermining that trust. Unless we work to better govern these technologies, trust will be lost forever and the promise of democracy may be lost with it.
MIT Technology Review
World Economic Forum
5G and the enterprise opportunity
This pandemic has revealed our most precious asset
07 October 2020
01 October 2020
“5G and the enterprise opportunity: How leading operators are developing ecosystem, cloud, and AI strategies for winning in 5G” is an MIT Technology Review Insights report that examines how operators are transforming their business and technology environments to deliver 5G enterprise services, particularly focusing on cloud, automation, and the ecosystems that are emerging to drive….
Coronavirus has highlighted the need for preventative healthcare, an investment in healthy ageing and the critical role of technology in rebuilding health.
University of St. Gallen
LGBT+ & career 07 October 2020 Being able to take into our own hands our own lives and the professional decisions that go with them and to tackle challenges courageously and actively is a key competence for individually satisfied, successful and meaningful career trajectories. An article by Ines Danuser.
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Inequality and Uneven Development Inequality is driving migration, as poorer populations become better connected About 165 million of the world’s international migrants (nearly two-thirds of the total as of 2017) are being hosted in high-income countries, according to United Nations statistics, while just 11 million live in low-income countries. The most popular migration corridors clearly lead from poorer to wealthier places - as most of the people migrating are doing so in order to seek a better life. They are in search of better incomes and means of securing food and shelter, and they are motivated by factors that are fundamental to the operation of any healthy civil society: the rule of law; safeguards to help prevent or limit corruption; access to health and education services; and protections from human rights abuses. In countries that are significant sources of migration, inequality remains pervasive and in some locations is entrenched. The effects of economic inequality are far reaching; a person’s ability to earn a decent living is overwhelmingly determined simply by the country where he or she lives, and a typical worker in a poor country is about $10,000 less productive annually than he or she would be in a rich country, according to a working paper published by the Center for Global Development in 2016. Local populations have gained ever greater visibility of this inequality, as telecommunications services become increasingly available in traditionally poor and marginalized societies. In Afghanistan, for example, where GDP per capita was still only about $520 as of 2018 (compared with $1,698 in Bangladesh, or $2,016 in India), according to World Bank data, the mobile phone subscription rate surged from 5% as of 2005 to 59% by 2018 - and that was still one of the lowest rates recorded globally. A research paper published in 2012 by the International Migration Institute, based on dozens of interviews with migrants settled in the Netherlands, found that social media and services like Skype played a crucial role in helping people thousands of miles from home to maintain ties to family and friends - and that online media lowered the threshold for people interested in migrating, making it more attractive than it would be otherwise. Related insight areas: Bangladesh, Corruption, India, Migration, Public Finance and Social Protection, Workforce and Employment, Sustainable Development, Digital Communications, Future of Economic Progress
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Latest knowledge Land Portal
ReliefWeb
COVID-19, reverse migration, and the impact on land systems
Scaling Economic Opportunities for Refugee Women: Understanding and Overcoming Obstacles to Women’s Economic Empowerment in Germany, Niger, & Kenya
07 October 2020 The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the world abruptly, affecting nearly all of humanity with breath-taking speed. At the time of writing in mid-September 2020, almost 20 million people have contracted the disease and more than 900,000 have died. [1] Besides its tragic direct toll on human lives, the pandemic is triggering a cascade of unexpected and dramatic effects that will deeply impact the global economy, social inequalities, and human– nature relationships in the coming years. Here, we wish to draw attention to an ongoing process that could have important consequences for land systems: that of reverse migration , or the return of migrant workers from cities to their rural areas of origin, especially in low- and middleincome countries.
05 October 2020 Women make up almost half of the global refugee population and face unique risks and challenges along the displacement journey (UNHCR, 2018). Not least of these is finding dignified and empowering ways of supporting oneself and one’s family in a new and unfamiliar setting (Gettliffe & Rashidova, 2019). Globally, almost all economic indicators show that women are worse off than men, and this economic marginalization is intensified by violence and displacement (International Rescue Committee, 2019). Refugee women are consistently under- or un-employed in greater numbers than other populations. Data show that refugee women tend to have dramatically lower employment rates than refugee men, or host country women, and face major pay gaps (Kabir & Klugman, 2019).
Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies
Refugees’ Integration into the Austrian Labour Market: Dynamics of Occupational Mobility and Job-Skills Mismatch
ReliefWeb
Global Humanitarian Response Plan COVID-19 Progress Report: Third Edition
05 October 2020 This paper analyses the employment experiences of the recent wave of Middle Eastern refugees (from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran) in the Austrian job market. The emphasis in this research was to investigate whether refugees experienced an initial (sharp) downgrade in their occupational status when they accepted their first employment, compared with the occupation they had in their home country, and then whether (and to what extent) such a downgrade had been followed by an upgrade in the jobs they currently hold.
04 October 2020 As this report is issued, more than 33 million people worldwide have been infected with COVID-19 and one million have died. Some 11.8 million cases and 409 thousand deaths have been confirmed in the 63 countries covered in the COVID-19 Global Humanitarian Response Plan (GHRP). However, the raw data should be treated with caution. There are well-known limitations to testing and reporting from many countries, including those in the GHRP. Many places have likely not reached peak transmission yet.
Observer Research Foundation
Affordable rental housing for the urban seasonal migrants in India
The New Humanitarian
05 October 2020
There’s a better way forward than sending Afghans home to conflict
While there exists a weak and broken ecosystem of affordable rental housing, there is no ecosystem for seasonal urban migrants.
30 September 2020 Opinion: Focusing on returns is shortsighted. Instead, let’s help the countries that host the vast majority of Afghan refugees and migrants.
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Valuing Human Dignity Inequality is only getting worse, and exacting a heavy toll on dignity The world is getting richer, but wealth is being concentrated in fewer hands. That is, while global inequality has generally declined as millions of people are lifted out of poverty, inequality within countries has continued to rise. The world’s 2,153 billionaires hold more cumulative wealth than 4.6 billion people - a group equal in size to more than half of the global population - according to a report published in early 2020 by Oxfam International. The issue of inequality relative to economic development is receiving renewed public attention, as it has only worsened in many parts of the world since the global financial crisis more than a decade ago. That in turn has helped trigger the rise of populist political movements that exploit fears about job security and immigration. The risks created by persistent inequality threaten to trigger long-term impacts on individual rights and on personal dignity. This assault on dignity further fuels the appeal of populist rhetoric, aggravates levels of political polarization, and threatens to erode the social fabric in many countries. In addition to the wealth gap, other forms of inequality have also robbed many people of their dignity. The World Economic Forum has noted that the global gender parity gap in terms of health, education, politics, and the workplace only continues to widen, for example. And reports have detailed systemic racial discrimination creating significant social and financial barriers in countries including the US and the United Kingdom. Developments like this have a very real human cost, not least in the form of psychological and emotional strain. Indeed, young people are increasingly suffering from mental health problems. The recognition of the inherent dignity of every living person must be shared by all societies - and translated into action aimed at reducing economic and social inequality, providing equal access to essential services and goods as well as equal opportunities, and securing human rights and individual freedom. These rights include the right to life and liberty, freedom from slavery and torture, freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to work and receive an education. Related insight areas: Education and Skills, Justice and Law, Gender Parity, Public Finance and Social Protection, Global Risks, Taxation, Civic Participation, United States, United Kingdom, Systemic Racism, Workforce and Employment, Inclusive Design, LGBTI Inclusion
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Latest knowledge The Conversation
London School of Economics and Political Science
Government in a pandemic: how coronavirus caused a dramatic shift in our relationship with the state
A Response: In defence of Kurdish diaspora feminism 07 October 2020
08 October 2020
Aven Aziz, Houzan Mahmoud, Rega Rauf and Shara Taher respond to the recent blog “Blaming the Feminists: Attempts to Debilitate a Movement”, in a call to highlight the importance of diaspora activism and to situate some historical and current work of diaspora feminists and the many achievements by academics and grassroots activists who have brought Kurdistan and its diaspora closer to gender equality.
As we head into the colder months, the increased threat of a second spike in the pandemic has forced the UK government to reintroduce new restrictive measures, including targeted local lockdowns, new rules (“of six”) and early pub closures. At the same time, compliance is fraying. One of the deeper issues with the government restrictions, which has less often been discussed, is a moral one. It concerns the level of control we grant to the government over our individual healthcare decisions. Understanding this dimension helps to explain why many people around the world are disobeying restrictions.
MIT Sloan Management Review
Addressing Racism, Word by Word 06 October 2020
Social Europe As protests against racism have filled streets across the country this year, I’ve been hearing from businesses looking for ways to navigate these controversial times. They generally have good intentions. But all too often, their efforts to take action devolve into petty battles over language.
Why Europe has a racism problem – Ojeaku Nwabuzo and Georgina Siklossy 08 October 2020 Racism made unprecedented headlines for weeks in Europe, following the brutal killing of George Floyd at the hands of the police in the United States and the ensuing mass protests around the world. It seemed Europeans were finally waking up to this reality but the news cycle has already moved on. Yet the racial-justice movement is pursuing its vital and relentless work to dismantle structural racism, as it has for decades.
ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute (ISEAS)
The Anti-Royalist Possibility: Thailand’s 2020 Student Movement 06 October 2020 The current protest movement in Thailand is breaking new political ground while acknowledging their predecessors. Khorapin Phuaphansawat 6 October 2020 Recent months have opened up a new possibility in Thai politics. In addition to calling for the dissolution of parliament and constitutional reform, the anti-government movement, composed primarily of urban secondary school and university students, […] The post The Anti-Royalist Possibility: Thailand’s 2020 Student Movement appeared first on ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute .
Overseas Development Institute
Justice for all and Afghanistan’s future 07 October 2020 The November 2020 pledging conference in Geneva will provide a vital platform for the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GoIRA) and the international community to demonstrate progress and recommit to a peaceful future for the country. Given the recent deal between the United States of America and the Taliban, and tentative steps forward on an intraAfghan dialogue including all key domestic actors, the outcomes of the pledging conference will be decisive in determining how Afghanistan grasps the present prospect of a peaceful and stable future. Ensuring justice for all, in line with Afghan and international commitments to achieving SDG16+, is an essential prerequisite for a durable peace.
Project Syndicate
The Catholic Challenge 05 October 2020 Church adherents pose no inherent threat to liberal democracy. The problem in the US is that people in the highest positions of authority, Catholic and Protestant alike, are pushing at the barriers between church and state, erected so carefully by America’s founders to ensure that the people, not God, would govern.
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Globalization Too many people have been left behind by globalization, creating increased polarization Global trade was growing at a rate of 8% annually before the 2008 financial crisis; post-recovery, it has slowed significantly. Annual merchandise trade volume increased by just 3% in 2018, and is expected to slow further to 2.6% in 2019, according to the World Trade Organization. Meanwhile nationalist backlash in a number of countries has made global economic governance more difficult and uncertain. The United Kingdom’s planned exit from the European Union is impending, and the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, has been reformulated as the “US-Mexico-Canada-Agreement� by the current US administration - which sharply criticized the World Trade Organization while blocking the re-appointment of a WTO body member in late 2018. These dynamics raise serious questions about the future ability of global institutions, already widely panned by those who feel they have been neglected, to provide assistance to those very same people by coordinating improved international economic cooperation for the greater good. The United Nations sought to provide a framework for this, by putting forward Sustainable Development Goals in 2015 that include eliminating poverty and making cities inclusive and safe. Subsequent progress reports have found that while satisfactory progress had been made on some goals in some regions, insufficient progress had been made on others.
Related insight areas: Supply Chain and Transport, Geoeconomics, Sustainable Development, Advanced Manufacturing and Production, Values, China, United States, International Trade and Investment, Emerging Multinationals, Corporate Governance, Geopolitics, Banking and Capital Markets, Global Risks
Even in countries that have benefited from globalization, too many have been left behind. The US, for example, has successfully leveraged international trade and found countless overseas markets for its goods, while at the same many of the jobs producing those goods have moved to other countries. The number of manufacturing jobs in the US fell to less than 11.5 million by 2010, from 19.4 million in 1979, according to a report published by the Pew Research Center in 2017. The US is not alone; while global trade has helped to reduce inequality among countries, within countries inequality is increasingly problematic. According to the International Monetary Fund, more than half of the countries in the world have seen an increase in income inequality over the past three decades. While income distribution systems are severely under-performing due to neglect, this is not an inevitable result of capitalism. The insufficient attention paid to those denied the benefits of globalization has contributed to the weakening of the very political consensus that long supported it.
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Latest knowledge LSE Business Review
Asian Development Bank
How student debt influences the behaviour of graduates
Countries in Central and West Asia must avoid a COVID-19 race to the bottom
08 October 2020
05 October 2020 Student loans have become the new normal for bachelor’s degree recipients in the United States. Between 1993 and 2016, the percentage of students who had borrowed at any time during their undergraduate years rose from 45 percent for 1993 graduates to 68 percent for 2016 graduates (Figure 1). Among borrowers, the median cumulative amount borrowed rose from $13,000 to $27,000 […].
Governments in Central and West Asia must commit to reforms and get them right, or face a downward spiral. The costs of the crisis are already obvious in rising deficits and debt. There is no room for complacency. VoxEU
Explaining the Wall/Main Street disconnect
Bruegel
05 October 2020
Eastern Germany’s New Growth Engine
While the Fed’s massive policy response to the Covid-19 shock was successful in reversing the financial meltdown, it did not prevent a dramatic collapse in the real economy. This column argues that the patterns observed are consistent with optimal monetary policy once the subtleties of the relationship between monetary policy, the stock market, and the economy are considered.
07 October 2020 Eastern Germany has suffered from three decades of deindustrialization since the collapse of communism, largely because of poor policy decisions. But by becoming an electric-vehicle powerhouse, the region can help to drive Europe's green transition and secure its own future prosperity.
LSE Business Review VoxEU
The indirect fiscal benefits of lowskilled immigration
Higher interest rates reduce the top one per cent’s share of the national income
07 October 2020
02 October 2020
There is a widespread perception that low-skilled immigration is a fiscal burden for society. This column incorporates indirect fiscal effects of immigration that arise in general equilibrium into various models that have been emphasised in the empirical immigration literature. It finds that the indirect fiscal effect is in fact positive, with one low-skilled immigrant in the US adding between $700 to $2,100 to the public finances through this channel each year.
Following the global financial crisis of 2008, central banks in the advanced economies have resorted to accommodative monetary policy measures in order to prop up their respective economies. Such measures mainly consisted of significant reduction in policy interest rates along with large quantitative easing programmes. While the macroeconomic effects of such measures on growth and employment have been positive, several […].
SAGE Publications
The Consequences of Neoliberalism in the Current Pandemic 06 October 2020 This article analyzes how the neoliberal policies, such as the politics of austerity (with considerable cuts to social policy expenditures including medical care and public health services) and the privatization of health services, imposed by many governments on both sides of the North Atlantic, considerably weakened the capacity of the response to the coronavirus pandemic in Italy, Spain, and the United States.
15 SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities Briefing, October 2020
Inclusive Growth A failure to improve living standards and reduce inequality has worsened social divides Even as global labour productivity grew by 74% between 1973 and 2013, worker compensation grew by just 12.5% over the same period, according to the Economic Policy Institute. While a relatively recent slowdown in global productivity has contributed to the reduction of the real value of salaries, other forces are also at work - such as rapid technological change, evolving market structures, and globalization, all of which began impacting distribution patterns even before the productivity slowdown. As a result, levels of social inclusion have either deteriorated or remained unchanged in 20 of 29 advanced economies around the world over the past five years, according to the World Economic Forum’s Inclusive Development Index 2018. According to the index, which measured 103 countries’ economic performance using several dimensions in addition to GDP, the advanced economies surveyed failed to collectively increase inclusion (measured by median household income, poverty, and wealth and income inequality) during the past five years, even as they increased their average “growth and development” score by more than 3%.
Related insight areas: Corporate Governance, Systemic Racism, Sustainable Development, The Great Reset, Global Risks, Public Finance and Social Protection, Social Innovation, Corruption, Agile Governance, Gender Parity, Values, Migration, Real Estate
Statistics like these have led to the emergence of a global consensus on the need for a more inclusive, sustainable model of growth and development. Enhancing inclusiveness is a long-term process, which requires long-lasting commitments among stakeholders including governments, businesses, and civil society organizations in order to mobilize resources and effort. Policy-makers need to place people and their standard of living at the centre of their strategies. Investment in education and income redistribution mechanisms, for example, can help to bridge the opportunity gap between rich and poor - though they will not be solely sufficient to achieve a more sustainable model. This will require a deeper rethinking of business models and public policy. World Bank research suggests that the economies that manage to achieve relatively good standards of inclusive growth also tend to adopt land reforms, actively support small- and medium-sized businesses, invest generously in education, and insulate policy-making from corruption. However, despite the consensus on a need for more inclusive growth, little in the way of concrete policy guidance has emerged. Greater multi-stakeholder efforts are therefore needed in order to create effective economic institutions, and to develop incentives that support growth and productivity.
16 SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities Briefing, October 2020
Latest knowledge LSE Business Review
London School of Economics and Political Science
An autopsy of zombie firms reveals growing and recovering companies
Big shifts: Lessons from the 1980s for the labour market after Covid-19
09 October 2020
08 October 2020 Economic policies practised after the financial crisis are alleged to have led to a rise in the incidence of zombiefirms. Zombies refer to weakly performing firms that are unable to cover their debt servicing costs from current profits over an extended period. The persistent survival of these poorly performing zombies are considered to be a drag on the economy, as […].
The economy-wide restructuring that set in after the crisis of the 1970s harbours some important lessons for the imminent post-Covid world, Bob Hancké argues. Many industrial sectors that provided working class families with stable incomes disappeared, taking the life chances of those left behind with them. But that did not happen everywhere and understanding the origins and consequences of the different adjustment paths can help avoid a second generation of losers from economic restructuring.
Asia Global Institute
Coherent Vision: How the Asia Pacific Can Drive Sustainable and Inclusive Growth
United States Institute of Peace
08 October 2020
Pakistan Faces a Long Road to Sustainable Growth
Referred to in the past as “four adjectives in search of a noun”, the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum over more than two decades has focused on its goal of free and open trade and investment across the region by 2020. This fateful year, which turned out to be marked by the worst global economic crisis for generations, is nearly over, with APEC’s 21 member economies searching for a post-2020 vision. Eduardo Pedrosa, secretary general of the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council, and economist Christopher Findlay, argue that the pandemic and its devastating aftermath have given the grouping that purpose: to lay out a long-term strategic framework that sets a positive direction for reform and growth for regional governments and gives businesses the confidence to plan for the future.
07 October 2020 At the turn of the century, Pakistan had the highest GDP per capita when compared with India, Bangladesh, and Vietnam. Twenty years later, it is at the bottom of the group. Political upheaval, a violent insurgency fed by the war in Afghanistan, and the inability of successive governments to carry out reforms are to blame for this decline. Today, a polarized political environment and elite intrigue among civilian, judicial, and military institutions has made sustainable economic growth and reforms that much more unlikely. The COVID-19 pandemic has further sharpened the challenge. VoxEU
Towards politically feasible and welfare-improving tax reforms
LSE Business Review
Transgender people suffer discrimination in the job market
07 October 2020
08 October 2020
The design of redistributive tax policies is an evergreen in the public discourse. This column proposes a new approach for the political economy analysis of tax policies based on examining the political support for reforms in contrast to the tax systems themselves. Focusing on monotonic tax reforms, it demonstrates that such reforms are only supported by a majority of the population if the voter with median income is among the beneficiaries.
Some may take the statement in the title of this post as completely obvious. It was therefore quite surprising to us that no study had previously attempted a rigorous experimental test of whether transgender applicants face discrimination in the hiring process. Previous studies have instead tended to rely on self-report measures where transgender people report experiencing relatively high rates of […].
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
Fiscal Monitor, October 2020 01 October 2020
17 SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities Briefing, October 2020
Pathways to Equality Even as the global middle class expands, wealth disparities within countries have worsened The good news is that absolute global poverty continues to decline. But even as extreme poverty rates fall, and the wealth gap between industrialized countries and the rest of the world narrows, the divide separating rich and poor within countries has widened. The World Inequality Report published in 2018 by the World Inequality Lab at the Paris School of Economics found that the inequality gap had grown significantly in Russia, India, China, and North America. Inequality across geographical regions varied significantly, according to the report; while 61% of national income was captured by the top 10% of society in the Middle East, the top 10% captured a much smaller share of national income, or 37%, in Europe, for example. In 2019, Credit Suisse’s Global Wealth Report noted that the world’s richest 10% owned 82% of global wealth. There are clear and compelling moral reasons to do more to address this situation. There are also practical reasons; according to an International Monetary Fund research paper published in 2017, excluding people from the benefits of economic growth can undermine the sustainability of that growth. The World Economic Forum’s annual Global Risks Report has illustrated the connections between rising income disparity and profound social instability. As inequality becomes more persistent, it can become politically toxic; finding ways to slow and reverse this trend must be a widelyshared priority. This is certainly the case if we want to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals established in 2015 in order to guide the world a more sustainable path by 2030, including the goals related to eliminating poverty and making a quality education available to all. One particularly important finding in the 2018 World Inequality Report was that national policies and institutions play a critical role in determining the distribution of wealth; inequality is therefore often a product of the ways national policies overlap with global governance gaps. As climate change, technological disruption, and geopolitical fragility threaten to only further worsen inequality, we must address the structures embedded in many of our social, economic, and political systems that aggravate the problem. That means, for example, more proactively confronting the links between corruption, inequality, tax evasion, and human rights. Related insight areas: Public Finance and Social Protection, Human Rights, Workforce and Employment, Taxation, Corruption, Education and Skills, Justice and Law, Global Health, Social Innovation, Gender Parity, Civic Participation
18 SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities Briefing, October 2020
Latest knowledge Bocconi Knowledge
International Food Policy Research Institute
CSR Destroys Value When Firms Stop Leading by Example
Rural non-farm employment in Eastern India: Implications for economic wellbeing
08 October 2020
03 October 2020 High CSR performance usually works as stock price insurance against negative events. If the event is due to management conduct that contradicts CSR principles, though, markets punish, not reward, high CSR performers, according to research by Bartov, Marra, and Momente'.
To be inclusive, economic development in India must focus on eastern India, which has a high population growth rate, population pressure, high incidence of poverty, small landholding size in agriculture, and underdeveloped rural infrastructure. Employment diversification towards the non-farm sector in eastern India from 1993–1994 to 2011–2012 shows considerable variation by income group and farm-size. The effects of diversification—whether driven by pursuit of higher income or distress—are stratified. Estimates based on instrumental variable regressions suggest that all types of non-farm employment improve the economic well-being of households. This is a preview.
World Economic Forum
This project restores forest in Borneo to protect orangutang and gibbons, and empower locals 06 October 2020 Center for International Forestry Research
From planting to natural regeneration: best approaches to tree growing
Oxford Review of Economic Policy
05 October 2020
02 October 2020
COVID-19 and public-sector capacity
Tree planting techniques and technology, from species selection to considering natural regeneration, can help reduce costs, improve survival rates while connecting communities. During the second session we will consider what trees make the most sense under different climate scenarios, the role of biodiversity, where do we plant which tree species – or let nature do the work through natural regeneration. New technologies, their applications to the future of tree planting and restoration will also be discussed.
The paper argues that to govern a pandemic, governments require dynamic capabilities and capacity— too often missing. These include capacity to adapt and learn; capacity to align public services and citizen needs; capacity to govern resilient production systems; and capacity to govern data and digital platforms.
Brookings
The world needs better convening that fosters collective action 05 October 2020 COVID-19 has exposed and accelerated many trends of globalization. Development actors find themselves up against a host of risks and challenges that no organization can resolve on their own. Center for Global Development
Debt Relief for Poor Countries: Three Ideas Whose Time Has Come 05 October 2020 There are three critical and urgent issues that should rise to the top of the agenda for the upcoming meetings of the G20 and the IMF and World Bank. IMF shareholders should seize the moment to give the Fund a mandate to develop feasible but fit-for-purpose proposals in these areas.
19 SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities Briefing, October 2020
References 1. Access to Law and Justice
4. Inequality and Uneven Development
Social justice, inclusion and sustainable development need a ‘Great Reset’. Here are 3 key steps we can take, World Economic Forum, www.weforum.org Reset: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society, GovLab - Living Library, thelivinglib.org Investigating the Police: Reporting Tips & Tools, Global Investigative Journalism Network, gijn.org Mining Threatens 20% of Indigenous Lands in the Amazon, World Resources Institute, www.wri.org Europe’s new law to end corporate abuse should learn from Obama's legacy, Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, www.businesshumanrights.org Sahar Jallad on indigenous land rights and COVID-19, Land Portal, www.youtube.com Imagine a world without violent conflict, Chatham House, www.youtube.com
COVID-19, reverse migration, and the impact on land systems, Land Portal, landportal.org Refugees’ Integration into the Austrian Labour Market: Dynamics of Occupational Mobility and Job-Skills Mismatch, Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw.ac.at Affordable rental housing for the urban seasonal migrants in India, Observer Research Foundation, www.orfonline.org Scaling Economic Opportunities for Refugee Women: Understanding and Overcoming Obstacles to Women’s Economic Empowerment in Germany, Niger, & Kenya , ReliefWeb, reliefweb.int Global Humanitarian Response Plan COVID-19 Progress Report: Third Edition, ReliefWeb, reliefweb.int There’s a better way forward than sending Afghans home to conflict, The New Humanitarian, www.thenewhumanitarian.org
5. Valuing Human Dignity
2. Housing, Wealth and Affordability
Government in a pandemic: how coronavirus caused a dramatic shift in our relationship with the state, The Conversation, theconversation.com Why Europe has a racism problem – Ojeaku Nwabuzo and Georgina Siklossy, Social Europe, www.socialeurope.eu Justice for all and Afghanistan’s future, Overseas Development Institute, www.youtube.com A Response: In defence of Kurdish diaspora feminism, London School of Economics and Political Science, blogs.lse.ac.uk Addressing Racism, Word by Word, MIT Sloan Management Review, sloanreview.mit.edu The Anti-Royalist Possibility: Thailand’s 2020 Student Movement, ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute (ISEAS), www.iseas.edu.sg The Catholic Challenge, Project Syndicate, www.project-syndicate.org
New DAC Rules on Debt Relief – A Poor Measure of Donor Effort, Center for Global Development, www.cgdev.org What Drives Household Bankruptcy?, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania - Knowledge@Wharton, knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu The Stock-Market Disconnect, Project Syndicate, www.projectsyndicate.org A Multicolored New Deal, Project Syndicate, www.project-syndicate.org The role of beliefs on social and communal insurance, VoxEU, voxeu.org Corporate bond market dysfunction during COVID-19 and lessons from the Fed’s response, Brookings, www.brookings.edu Booming house prices spell more trouble for the social contract, The Economist, www.economist.com
Acknowledgements 3. Inequality Cover and selected images throughout supplied by Reuters. Robots replace routine tasks performed by workers, VoxEU, voxeu.org
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Tackling 21st Century Geoscience Problems with Machine Learning , EOS, eos.org 5G and the enterprise opportunity, MIT Technology Review, www.technologyreview.com LGBT+ & career, University of St. Gallen, www.unisg.ch “The Long Ascent”: 4 Key Cornerstones for Global Economic Recovery, International Monetary Fund (IMF), www.youtube.com Governance through the digital disruption of democracy, Observer Research Foundation, www.orfonline.org This pandemic has revealed our most precious asset, World Economic Forum, www.weforum.org
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21 SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities Briefing, October 2020
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