Short answers, pulled from the story.
Economic inequality is an umbrella term covering income inequality, wealth inequality, and consumption inequality. The most widely used measurement tool is the Gini coefficient, which runs from 0 (perfect equality) to 1 (one person holds all resources). A Gini index above 50 percent is considered high; below 30 percent is considered low.
According to the 2022 World Inequality Report, organized by economists Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman, the bottom half of the global population owns 2 percent of global wealth while the top 10 percent owns 76 percent. The top 1 percent alone holds 38 percent of global wealth.
A 2011 OECD study identified the gap between demand for skilled labor and its supply as the main driver. Technology, the decline of union membership, neoliberal policies including deregulation and public spending cuts, and trade liberalization have all been linked to rising within-country inequality. An IMF review of four decades of neoliberal policy in 2016 found that privatization, spending cuts, and deregulation resulted in increased inequality.
Oxfam's 2021 report found that billionaires worldwide saw their wealth increase by $3.9 trillion during the pandemic, while the number of people living on less than $5.50 a day likely rose by 500 million. Economist Joseph Stiglitz described rising economic inequality as the pandemic's most significant outcome.
In 1863, two years before emancipation from slavery, Black people owned 0.5 percent of U.S. national wealth; by 2019, that share had risen to just over 1.5 percent. Redlining, documented through research that overlaid 1930s Home Owners' Loan Corporation maps with 2020 COVID-19 impact data, is one of the documented mechanisms that excluded Black Americans from accumulating intergenerational wealth.
Economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty recommend top marginal tax rates of up to 50, 70, or 90 percent on the wealthiest earners. A 2011 OECD study recommended well-targeted income support, expanded employment access, job training for low-skilled workers, and better formal education access. A 2023 letter signed by more than 200 economists from 67 countries warned that failure to reverse rising inequality would entrench poverty and increase the risk of climate breakdown.