Every year, before the Annual World Economic Forum at Davos, Oxfam International releases its annual inequality report. Each report looks to capture a different dimension of inequality (like the 2019 report titled “Public good or Private Wealth?”) but fundamentally revolves around the various forms of inequality that have now become ubiquitous. It is in light of this that we first look at what inequality means and what its impacts are on our day to day life.



What is inequality?

The Cambridge dictionary describes inequality as “the unfair situation in society when some people have more opportunities, etc. than other people”. The United Nations describes it even more simply as “the state of not being equal, especially in status, rights and opportunities”.

While the term itself is quite vast and has various interpretations, for the purpose of simplicity, the two large umbrellas under which we can classify inequality would be economic inequality and social inequality. Both these categories are deeply intertwined and inequality in one often affects the inequality in another. Over the years, through its course of study, Oxfam has studied inequality as a grave social injustice and has documented the incidents and scale of this inequality at a global level.



Economic Inequality

Perhaps the most quantified and calculated form of inequality is the economic variant. Even here, the most predominant forms of inequality measured are those of income inequality and wealth inequality. Income inequality is the inequality in and disparity in the incomes commanded by the top percentile of the population in comparison to the bottom percentiles, while wealth inequality measures look to do the same but by calculating disparities in wealth instead of income.



Income

“Income is not just the money received through pay, but all the money received from employment (wages, salaries, bonuses etc.), investments, such as interest on savings accounts and dividends from shares of stock, savings, state benefits, pensions (state, personal, company) and rent.”

-The Equality Trust

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Wealth

“Wealth refers to the total amount of assets of an individual or household. This may include financial assets, such as bonds and stocks, property and private pension rights. Wealth inequality, therefore, refers to the unequal distribution of assets in a group of people”

-The Equality Trust





Social Inequality

Social inequality occurs when resources in a given society are distributed unevenly, typically through norms of allocation, that engender specific patterns along lines of socially defined categories of persons. It is the differentiation preference of access to social goods in society brought about by power, religion, kinship, prestige, race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, and class.



In India, one of the most distinctive forms of social inequity come within the spheres of gender and caste, where, people coming from the marginalized sections of these social categories, are directly impacted in terms of their opportunities, access to essential utilities, and their potential as a whole.



In India, this is what that looks like:

OXFAM INDIA TAKES THE FIGHT FOR INEQUALITY TO THE STREETS. READ MORE

Governments must act to fight inequality

Governments must listen to ordinary citizens and take meaningful action to reduce inequality. All governments must: set concrete, time-bound targets and action plans to reduce inequality as part of their commitments under Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 10 on inequality. These plans should include action in the following three areas:

Deliver universal free health care, education and other public services that also work for women and girls. Stop supporting privatization of public services. Provide pensions, child benefits and other social protection for all. Design all services to ensure they also deliver for women and girls.

Free up women's time by easing the millions of unpaid hours they spend every day caring for their families and homes. Let those who do this essential work have a say in budget decisions and make freeing up women’s time a key objective of government spending. Invest in public services including water, electricity and childcare that reduce the time needed to do this unpaid work. Design all public services in a way that works for those with little time to spare.

End the under-taxation of rich individuals and corporations. Tax wealth and capital at fairer levels. Stop the race to the bottom on personal income and corporate taxes. Eliminate tax avoidance and evasion by corporates and the super-rich. Agree to a new set of global rules and institutions to fundamentally redesign the tax system to make it fair, with developing countries having an equal seat at the table.

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