two paltry percentage points for those in the bottom quintile in
2007 under PPP-adjusted exchange rates. Using market exchange
rates, the richest population quintile gets 83% of global income with
just a single percentage point for those in the poorest quintile.
While there is evidence of progress, it is too slow; it would take
more than 800 years for the bottom billion to achieve ten percent
of global income under the current rate of change.
The extreme inequality in the distribution of the world’s income
should make us question the current development model
(development for whom?), which has accrued mostly to the
wealthiest. Not only does inequality slow economic growth, but it
results in health and social problems and generates political
instability. Ortiz and Cummins show that for 94 developing
countries, those countries in which levels of inequality have
increased experienced slower annual per capita GDP growth over
the same time period. Further, looking at crime rates and Gini
indices across a sample of 138 countries, the authors find that
countries with high levels of inequality tend to be much more
violent. Inequality is dysfunctional, and there is a grave need to
place equity, with a strong focus on redistribution, at the center of
the development agenda. As an alternative, Ortiz and Cummins
summarize the United Nations development agenda, which aims to
strike the right balance between growth and equitable development
progress.
Bill Kerry, Kate E. Pickett and Richard Wilkinson, in “The Spirit
Level: Why Greater Equality makes Societies Stronger,” explain why
problems with social gradients (health, violent crime, and
educational failure) are not caused by differences in material wealth,
or by any kind of sorting or selection effects, but instead are due to
social status differentiation itself - to the degree of hierarchy within
a society. One of Wilkinson and Pickett’s most significant
contributions is the development of the International Index of