History will probably remember the pandemic as the ‘first time since the reports began that inequality has increased simultaneously in virtually every country on earth’. This is the verdict from Oxfam’s inequality report on the year 2020 – a terrible year that hit the poorest and hardest worldwide.
Why it matters: The poorest in the world have been in a race with time and faced a risk of subsistence in the form of global climate change. According to the World Bank, the coronavirus pandemic could set back the global poverty reduction as much as a full decade.
- The virus has exposed how work, health and education systems create additional disadvantages for low-income families and minorities, while the rich can recover quickly.
- A majority of nearly 300 economists from around the world surveyed by Oxfam said they expected the virus to address gender inequalities (56%), race (66%), wealth (78%) and income (87%) ) in their countries will worsen.
By the numbers: The number of people living on less than $ 1.90 a day may have increased by more than 400 million last year. This is a larger number of people than the population of the United States.
- More than 3 billion people had no access to health care, and three-quarters of the workers had no access to sickness benefits. Meanwhile, the wealth of the best 1% continued to rise.
How it works: In the United States, 22,000 Black and Latino Americans would still be alive today if their coronavirus mortality rates were the same as white people – a result of unequal access to health care, excessive number of pre-existing conditions and other composite disadvantages in color communities, has.
Yes, but: While inequality within countries would have become much worse in 2020, the world would generally have become less inequitable. This is because rich countries are generally hit harder by the coronavirus than the poorest countries, which tend to have much younger populations.
What to look for: About 1.7 billion children worldwide have joined schools. But children in rich countries can continue their education online and are locked out of school for much less time – an average of about six weeks, compared to four months for children in the poorest countries. Millions of girls dropped out of school in 2020 and will never return.
The conclusion: As UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said: “While we are all floating on the same sea, it is clear that some are in superyachts, while others are clinging to the floating rubble.”