IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp15161.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Global Inequality Boomerang

Author

Listed:
  • Kanbur, Ravi

    (Cornell University)

  • Ortiz-Juarez, Eduardo

    (King's College London)

  • Sumner, Andy

    (King's College London)

Abstract

In this paper we argue that the decline in global inequality over the last decades has spurred a 'sunshine' narrative of falling global inequality that has been rather oversold, in the sense, we argue, it is likely to be temporary. We argue the decline in global inequality will reverse due to changes in the between-country component. We find there is a potentially startling global inequality 'boomerang', possibly in the mid-to-late 2020s, which would have happened even if there were no pandemic, and that the pandemic is likely to bring forward the global inequality boomerang.

Suggested Citation

  • Kanbur, Ravi & Ortiz-Juarez, Eduardo & Sumner, Andy, 2022. "The Global Inequality Boomerang," IZA Discussion Papers 15161, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp15161
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp15161.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andy Sumner & Eduardo Ortiz-Juarez & Christopher Hoy, 2022. "Measuring global poverty before and during the pandemic: a political economy of overoptimism," Third World Quarterly, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(1), pages 1-17, January.
    2. World Bank, 2018. "Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2018 [Rapport 2018 sur la pauvreté et la prospérité partagée]," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 30418.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Frederick van der Ploeg & Johannes Emmerling & Ben Groom, 2023. "The Social Cost of Carbon with Intragenerational Inequality and Economic Uncertainty," Discussion Papers 2301, University of Exeter, Department of Economics.
    2. Gradín, Carlos, 2024. "Revisiting the trends in global inequality," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 179(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ines A. Ferreira & Vincenzo Salvucci & Finn Tarp, 2022. "Poverty, inequality, and growth: trends, policies, and controversies," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2022-43, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Olalekan Charles Okunlola & Anthony E. Akinlo, 2021. "Does economic freedom enhance quality of life in Africa?," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 68(3), pages 357-387, September.
    3. Alkire, Sabina & Nogales, Ricardo & Quinn, Natalie Naïri & Suppa, Nicolai, 2021. "Global multidimensional poverty and COVID-19: A decade of progress at risk?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 291(C).
    4. Benoit Decerf, 2021. "Combining absolute and relative poverty: income poverty measurement with two poverty lines," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 56(2), pages 325-362, February.
    5. Dutta, Indranil & Nogales, Ricardo & Yalonetzky, Gaston, 2021. "Endogenous weights and multidimensional poverty: A cautionary tale," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    6. Chei Bukari & Millicent Abigail Aning-Agyei & Christian Kyeremeh & Gloria Essilfie & Kofi Fosu Amuquandoh & Anthony Akwesi Owusu & Isaac Christopher Otoo & Kpanja Ibrahim Bukari, 2022. "Effect of COVID-19 on Household Food Insecurity and Poverty: Evidence from Ghana," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 159(3), pages 991-1015, February.
    7. Brandolini, Andrea & Micklewright, John, 2020. "Tony Atkinson's New Book, Measuring Poverty around the World: Some Further Reflections," IZA Discussion Papers 12890, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Oliver Fiala & Enrique Delamónica & Gerardo Escaroz & Ismael Cid Martinez & José Espinoza-Delgado & Aristide Kielem, 2021. "Children in Monetary Poor Households: Baseline and COVID-19 Impact for 2020 and 2021," Economics of Disasters and Climate Change, Springer, vol. 5(2), pages 161-176, July.
    9. Jan Anton van Zanten & Rob van Tulder, 2020. "Beyond COVID-19: Applying “SDG logics” for resilient transformations," Journal of International Business Policy, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 3(4), pages 451-464, December.
    10. Olivier Bargain & Guy Lacroix & Luca Tiberti, 2021. "Intrahousehold Resource Allocation and Individual Poverty: Assessing Collective Model Predictions against Direct Evidence on Sharing," Working Papers hal-03432676, HAL.
    11. Ariel Herbert Fambeu & Georges Dieudonné Mbondo & Patricia Tchawa Yomi, 2022. "Bigger or better? The effect of public spending on happiness in Africa," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 34(4), pages 487-499, December.
    12. Wenguang Zhang & Ting Lei & Yu Gong & Jun Zhang & Yirong Wu, 2022. "Using Explainable Artificial Intelligence to Identify Key Characteristics of Deep Poverty for Each Household," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(16), pages 1-21, August.
    13. Yixia Cai & Timothy Smeeding, 2019. "Deep and Extreme Child Poverty in Rich and Poor Nations: Lessons from Atkinson for the Fight Against Child Poverty," LIS Working papers 780, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    14. Hasan, Zubair, 2019. "Human development in Muslim countries: need fulfillment versus basic universal income from Islamic perspective," MPRA Paper 97026, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Sep 2019.
    15. Angela Daley & Thesia Garner & Shelley Phipps & Eva Sierminska, 2020. "Differences across countries and time in household expenditure patterns: implications for the estimation of equivalence scales," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(6), pages 734-757, November.
    16. Noha Emara & Mahmoud Mohieldin, 2020. "Financial inclusion and extreme poverty in the MENA region: a gap analysis approach," Review of Economics and Political Science, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 5(3), pages 207-230, July.
    17. Migbaru Alamirew Workneh & Zerayehu Sime Eshete, 2021. "Household Level Non-Monetary Poverty in Ethiopia and its Driving Factors: a Multidimensional Approach with Panel Estimation," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 154(1), pages 145-168, February.
    18. Nguyen, Hoa-Thi-Minh & Do, Huong & Kompas, Tom, 2021. "Economic efficiency versus social equity: The productivity challenge for rice production in a ‘greying’ rural Vietnam," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    19. Ayenew, Ashenafi Belayneh, 2021. "Welfare Impact of Hosting Refugees in Ethiopia," EconStor Preprints 228519, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    20. Tony Addison & Alan R. Roe, 2024. "Extractive industries: imperatives, opportunities, and dilemmas in the net-zero transition," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2024-26, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    global inequality; inequality boomerang; COVID-19;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp15161. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.