Despite the Doomsday Narrative, Global Inequality Has Significantly Declined

September 14, 2023

This progress has been widely shared, to the great benefit of the people at the bottom of the distribution.

by Veronique de Rugy Reason.com

Today’s hyperpartisan and frequently negative news cycle ignores one significant and uplifting story: the precipitous decline of global inequality. It’s a subject that deserves our attention, for it reveals the power of markets, trade, and human ingenuity to lift up societies.

For decades, critics of globalization lamented the chasm that trade and a growing economic interdependence among nations would ostensibly create between the rich and the poor. In the last few decades, however, we’ve witnessed a clear reduction in global inequality quite contrary to the doomsayers’ old predictions. Emerging economies—many of which were once considered backwaters destined to languish—have taken giant leaps forward by joining the global economy. Millions of people have been raised from abject poverty and wealth disparities have narrowed.