Signal 83% of countries have high income inequality

Summary

Citing the World Bank, the report states that 83 percent of all countries have high income inequality. The figure follows the observation that global income inequality is shrinking only slowly, largely thanks to the development of a few countries such as China and India. The report explains that domestic inequality has remained high in many countries, with top incomes rising faster than middle and lower incomes. It adds that wealth is distributed even more unequally than income, with the richest 1 percent holding an outsized share of the world's assets. The report concludes that inequality extends beyond money to education, health, life expectancy and exposure to environmental damage, and that it stays high in the absence of policy.