This morning, I was reading the findings of World Inequality Lab, Paris School of Economics, Paris. It finds that the Covid 19 pandemic had increased the share of the wealth of the billionaires of the world and had brought down the share of wealth of the poor, that made fifty percent of the world’s population own just about 2% of the planet’s wealth.
This means, the pandemic Covid 19 had, while increasing the share of wealth of the billionaire on the world, increased the existing chasm between the rich and the poor.
It was earlier believed that as the number of rich people increases in the world, the ‘tricks down’ effect will uplift the poor from poverty to higher living. The effect of Covid 19 on the planet was that it had not only created much more poverty but also made the rich, more richer. During Covid times more than 100 million people got added to the world’s poor list.
Within the developing nations such as India, inequality has only soared. Same-country disparities now account for more than two-thirds of global inequality, gone up from roughly half in 2000,
Today, around 2,750 billionaires own 3.5 per cent of the world’s riches, up from 1% in the year 1995.
Latin America and Middle East has shown higher levels of income disparity. 75 percent of the wealth of these nations are in the hands of just 10 percent of the population.
The case of India is no better. As per the Inequality Lab findings, India now has a challenge of the ‘missing middle class’. Clearly, the pandemic had been very harsh on the Indian middle class and the poor. More from the middle class had fallen into the poor slot now. The country got shocked by the huge second wave of the Pandemic and stuck by its enormity, the country’s leadership went numb and inactive.
It is important that we understand the scenarios well, learn from it, so that we do not repeat the same.
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