Introduction: the story so far

1
Introduction the story so far

• Ch.1, Greig, Hulme, and Turner

2
Arguing about inequality

• Development studies emerged after WW2
• concerned with bridging the gap between richer
  and poorer countries through economic growth
• By 1970s there was less enthusiasm
• Development gap persists into the 21st century
• Global inequality trails the career of modern
  development policy as its dark shadow

3
An overview of global inequality

• UNs Human Development Report 2003 provides a
  useful classificatory scheme for looking at
• Inequality across countries, within countries,
  and across the worlds people
• Economic statistics

4
Inequalities across nations

• Richer countries produce over 4/5ths of the
  worlds measurable Gross National Product
• Remaining one fifth concentrated in East Asia
• GNP per head less than USD100 in Ethiopia,
  Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi
• GNP per head more than USD35,000 in Japan,
  Norway, Switzerland, and Luxembourg

5

• Global per capita income trebled from 1960-1990s,
  but since the 1980s there were over 100 countries
  whose per capita declined.
• Countries with a declining per capita their
  share of world exports declined, food production
  per capita decreased, their infrastructure had
  deteriorated.
• Richer countries dominate international
  institutions (e.g. IMF, WTO)
• Inequality of power to dictate the rules of
  global trade

6
Inequalities within countries

• UNDP estimates that 53 countries (containing 80
  of world population) experienced rising
  inequality
• Narrowing only occurred in 9 countries
• Gini Index measuring inequality.
• Equal income distribution is assigned value 0
• Country where one person has all income is
  assigned 100
• Japan, Denmark, Hungary (Gini lt 25)
• Brazil, Nicaragua, Bostwana, Swaziland, Central
  African Republic, Sierra Leone (Gini gt 60)
• Japan poorest 20 receive 10.6 of income
  richest 20 receive 35.7
• Brazil and Bostwana poorest 20 receive just
  over 2 and the richest 20 per cent account for
  over 70 of income .
• Mexico richest persons income equals 17 million
  poorest citizens
• Phenomenon also spreading to richer countries

7
Inequalities across the worlds people

• Global indicators of inequality
• The principal polarity is not between rich and
  poor countries, but between rich and poor people
  across the world
• Globalization of production and trade raised the
  salience of inequalities across nations and
  classes
• Richest 20 of the worlds population accounted
  for 70 of income in 1960
• By 1991 this share increased to 85
• Meanwhile the bottom 20 per cent declined from
  2.3 per cent to 1.4 per cent.
• By the end of the millenium, wealthiest 5 earned
  114 times as much as the poorest 5
• Top 1 earned the equivalent of the bottom 57
• Technological efficiency will reduce the employed
  to 20, 80 of humanity will be unemployed
  therefore poor.
• Some claim we are already in a 2/3rds society
  bottom third denied meaningful participation in
  formal economic activities
• Regressive distribution of income and wealth

8
The paradox of modernity the polarization of
affluence and deprivation

• But the world has never been so wealthy
• Productivity is at unprecedented levels
• Higher living standards
• But inequality has increased and one fifth of the
  worlds population has gone backward economically
• Gap between unprecedented affluence and
  remarkable deprivation
• Digital divide (by the turn of the millenium,
  while 50 percent of US citizens had internet
  access, the corresponding figure for Africa 0.4
  per cent.
• Chapters 5 and 6 of the book deal with history of
  development theory
• endogenous approach adopts an individualistic
  perspective on development (no international
  context)
• Interconnected nature of global inequality.
  Structural (exogenous) perspective global
  inequalities are an inherent characteristic of
  development (inequality is the other side of the
  coin of progress)
• While individualist approaches tend to focus on
  the material, cultural or psychological
  attributes of the poor, the more structural
  approaches target how wealth perpetuates
  inequalities.

9
Debating Development in the 21st Century

• Trillions of dollars of aid transferred to poorer
  countries have not brought development
• Disillusionment with progress and development
• Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) aims to
  halve global poverty by 2015
• Traumatic changes also in the wealthier parts of
  the world
• Wealthy countries experienced economic change and
  social dislocation
• World might be overshooting its ecological
  threshold
• Development contributing to global environmental
  problems
• Greenhouse gases, desertification, loss of
  biodiversity, salinity, water scarcity, air
  pollution, disease transmission
• Non-renewable resources depletion