Victoria A. Lawson, University of Washington
One of the most pressing challenges facing us at the beginning of the 21st century is increasing global inequalities. Extremes of wealth and poverty in the global South and the North underlie conditions of health and illness, educational opportunity and illiteracy, land ownership and forced migrations, employment protections or unregulated ‘flexible’ work. The World Bank’s 2008 report states that: “…2.8 Billion people – almost half the world’s population – live on less than $2/day” and that: “… the average income in the richest 20 countries is 37 times the average income in the poorest 20 – a gap that has doubled in the last 20 years”. The Human Development Report (2010) states that the last two decades have witnessed growing inequality, both within and between countries across the world. According to the Multinational Monitor in 2003 (7/1/2003), “[T]he richest 10 percent of the world’s population’s income is roughly 117 times higher than the poorest 10 percent, according to calculations performed by economists at the Economics Policy Institute (data from the International Monetary Fund). This is a huge jump from the ratio in 1980, when the income of the richest 10 percent was about 79 times higher than the poorest 10 percent”. Paul Krugman (2002) notes that in the United States the 13,000 richest families have as much income as the 20 million poorest. This course examines the paradox of expanding and deepening levels of inequality after sixty years of ‘development’ in the post-war era.
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