2.B. The poor
What does global inequality mean for the poor? An illustration of
global income disparities adapted from UNDP (1992 and 2005)
helps to contextualize the extremity of inequality that faces an
incredibly large number of poor persons. In Figure 7, global income
distribution resembles a “champagne glass” in which a large
concentration of income at the top trickles down to a thin stem at
the bottom. Overall, this provides a powerful graphic in terms of
the scant amount of income that is available to the poor on a global
scale. In particular, approximately 1.2 billion were living on less
than $1.25 per day in 2007 (22% of the world population) and
about 2.2 billion on less than $2 per day (or about 40% of the world
population).^29 An alternative way of viewing the “champagne glass”
is to compare the top percent of world income earners versus the
bottom. In doing so, we find that the wealthiest 61 million
individuals (or one percent of the global population) had the same
amount of income as the poorest 3.5 billion (or 56%) as of 2007.
Figure 7. Global Income Distributed by Percentiles of the Population in
2007 (or latest available) in PPP constant 2005 international dollars*Source: Adapted from UNDP (2005) using World Bank (2011), UNU-WIDER (2008), Eurostat (2011)
- According to the global accounting model
† Based on Chen and Ravallion (2008)
(^29) Based on PPP estimates in constant 2005 international dollars from Chen and
Ravallion (2008).
Each horizontal band
represents an equal fifth of
the world’s populati on