Transcript Inequality
Inequality The “Haves” and the “Have Nots” Course Themes Inequality – Crime Corporate Crime – Health Issues – War and Conflict – Race / Ethnicity – Gender and Sexuality Issues – Education – Environment Life Expectancy Falling child death rates Access to water and sanitation Immunizations More improvement Literacy rates increasing from 70-76% since 1995. Civil wars ended through negotiations with UN. More democracies. – Public protests to reduce corruption and increase democracy. Human Development Index HDI includes – Income – Education – Health HDI rising except for Sub-Saharan Africa Sub-Saharan Africa Includes most of Africa, south of the Saharan desert. As a result of colonization and exploitation, is one of the poorest geographical regions in the world. Is the news all good? How bad is it really? Let’s create a seating chart based on the distribution of wealth in the world. If I were to distribute the chairs based on wealth distribution, this is what it would look like. Distribution of Wealth The top 1% holds 40% of the wealth. The top 10% holds 85% of the wealth. The bottom 50% holds 1% of the wealth. How do you feel? How do you think this affects people around the world? – Although North America (US and Canada) has only 6% of the world adult population, it accounts for 34% of household wealth. – The study estimates that the global wealth Gini for adults is 89%. The same degree of inequality would be obtained if one person in a group of ten takes 99% of the total pie and the other nine share the remaining 1%. Declining HDI Sub-Saharan Africa Former Soviet Union Global Inequality Income inequality (of about 6.5 billion) – 1 billion people live on less than $1 a day. – 1.5 billion more live on less than $2 a day. Water and sanitation – 1 billion lack access to safe water. – 2.6 billion lack access to adequate sanitation. Malnutrition – 850 million people are malnourished Women and Children More than 10 million children die each year before their fifth birthday. An estimated 530,000 women die each year in pregnancy or childbirth. Simple interventions could prevent the majority of these deaths. Convergence and Divergence China and India have improved in many aspects. Sub-Saharan Africa and the former Soviet Union nations have moved backwards. South Asia, the Middle East and Latin America have virtually stayed the same. Overall The gap between the rich and poor nations are getting wider. Most poor (developing) nations are falling behind. Something as simple as lifting people above the $1 a day line would only take 2% of the income of the wealthiest 10% of the population! Coming Up Where does this inequality come from? A look at the fall of the former Soviet Union. What is life like for people working in poor nations to produce our goods?