1. Introduction: the story so far…
Ch.1, Greig, Hulme, and Turner

2. Arguing about inequality
Development studies emerged after WW2
concerned with bridging the gap between richer and poorer countries through economic growth
By 1970s there was less enthusiasm
Development gap persists into the 21st century
Global inequality ‘trails the career of modern development policy as its dark shadow’

3. An overview of global inequality
UN’s ‘Human Development Report 2003’ provides a useful classificatory scheme for looking at:
Inequality across countries, within countries, and across the world’s people
Economic statistics:

4. Inequalities across nations
Richer countries produce over 4/5ths of the world’s measurable Gross National Product
Remaining one fifth concentrated in East Asia
GNP per head less than USD$100 in Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi
GNP per head more than USD$35,000 in Japan, Norway, Switzerland, and Luxembourg

5. Global per capita income trebled from s, but since the 1980s there were over 100 countries whose per capita declined.
Countries with a declining per capita: their share of world exports declined, food production per capita decreased, their infrastructure had deteriorated.
Richer countries dominate international institutions (e.g. IMF, WTO)
Inequality of power to dictate the rules of global trade

6. Inequalities within countries
UNDP estimates that 53 countries (containing 80 % of world population) experienced rising inequality
Narrowing only occurred in 9 countries
Gini Index: measuring inequality.
Equal income distribution is assigned value ‘0’
Country where one person has all income is assigned ‘100’
Japan, Denmark, Hungary (Gini < 25)
Brazil, Nicaragua, Bostwana, Swaziland, Central African Republic, Sierra Leone (Gini > 60)
Japan: poorest 20% receive 10.6% of income; richest 20% receive 35.7%
Brazil and Bostwana: poorest 20% receive just over 2 % and the richest 20 per cent account for over 70 % of income .
Mexico: richest person’s income equals 17 million poorest citizens
Phenomenon also spreading to richer countries

7. Inequalities across the world’s people
Global indicators of inequality
The principal polarity is not between rich and poor countries, but between rich and poor people across the world
Globalization of production and trade raised the salience of inequalities across nations and classes
Richest 20% of the world’s population accounted for 70% of income in 1960
By 1991 this share increased to 85%
Meanwhile the bottom 20 per cent declined from 2.3 per cent to 1.4 per cent.
By the end of the millenium, wealthiest 5% earned 114 times as much as the poorest %5
Top 1% earned the equivalent of the bottom 57%
Technological efficiency will reduce the employed to 20%, 80% of humanity will be unemployed therefore poor.
Some claim we are already in a 2/3rds society – bottom third denied meaningful participation in formal economic activities
Regressive distribution of income and wealth

8. The paradox of modernity: the polarization of affluence and deprivation
But the world has never been so wealthy
Productivity is at unprecedented levels
Higher living standards
But inequality has increased and one fifth of the world’s population has gone backward economically
Gap between ‘unprecedented affluence’ and ‘remarkable deprivation’
Digital divide (by the turn of the millenium, while 50 percent of US citizens had internet access, the corresponding figure for Africa 0.4 per cent.
Chapters 5 and 6 of the book deal with history of development theory
‘endogenous’ approach adopts an ‘individualistic’ perspective on development (no international context)
Interconnected nature of global inequality. ‘Structural’ (exogenous) perspective: global inequalities are an inherent characteristic of development (inequality is the other side of the coin of progress)
While individualist approaches tend to focus on the material, cultural or psychological attributes of the poor, the more structural approaches target how wealth perpetuates inequalities.

9. Debating Development in the 21st Century
Trillions of dollars of aid transferred to poorer countries have not brought development
Disillusionment with progress and development
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs): aims to halve global poverty by 2015
Traumatic changes also in the wealthier parts of the world
Wealthy countries experienced economic change and social dislocation
World might be overshooting its ecological threshold
Development contributing to global environmental problems
Greenhouse gases, desertification, loss of biodiversity, salinity, water scarcity, air pollution, disease transmission
Non-renewable resources depletion