The Atlas of Global Inequalities. Ben Crow

      

      

      

      

      

      

      

      

      

      

      

      

      

      Acknowledgments

      The following people provided background research on specific topics: Sachi Allen Income, Child Labor, Poverty, Household Water Courtney Codd Gender Meghan Lefkowitz Child Labor Patricia Fung Consumption, Life Expectancy Meena Garg Age Sandeep Gill International Trade, Access to Healthcare Jenna Harvey Hunger, Literacy, Barriers to Education Lucas Healy Digital Divide James Issel Energy, Household Fuel, Mobility Taralyn Kawata Labor Migration, Freedom & Democracy, Race & Ethnicity Madhu Lodha Early Childhood Care & Education, Age Jasmine Lopez Government Action, Class, Infectious Diseases Cory Mann Air Pollution & Health, Water & Health Patrick O’Connell Climate Change, Deforestation Sarah Orr Budget Priorities Issac Rigler Incarceration & Execution Erin Stephens HDI, Wealth, Work & Unemployment Nichole Zlatunich Maternal Mortality, Child Mortality In addition, several people deserve special mention: Nichole Zlatunich for her ideas, enthusiasm and authorship in the early months of this and preceding projects; the team at Myriad Editions, including Jannet King for so ably steering the project through a transatlantic flow of editorial suggestions and comments, assisted by Dawn Sackett, Isabelle Lewis for transforming the data into elegant graphics, and Candida Lacey and Corinne Pearlman for their helpful co-operation; Bob Sutcliffe for providing many sources, ideas and frequent advice; Brian Fulfrost for his coordination and work on the online UC Atlas of Global Inequality; participants in the Mapping Global Inequalities conference at UCSC in 2007; Martha Ramirez and others at the UCSC Library for their rapid responses; students in Sociology 171 Global Inequalities in Fall 2009 for their work on early drafts. Many others provided advice and assistance, including: Amit Basol, Tom Bassett, Henry Bernstein, Laura Cerruti, Carol Colfer, James Davies, Hannah Engholm, James K. Galbraith, Paul Hewett, Corrinne Hughes, Marlene Kim, Anirudh Krishna, Edith Kuiper, Cynthia Lloyd, Allister McGregor, Maureen Mackintosh, Branko Milanovic, Lisa Nishioka. Ravi Rajan, Craig Reinarman, Anthony Shorrocks, William Sunderlin, Brent Swallow, Göran Therborn, M. Ufuk Tutan, Ed Wolff. Ben Crow would like to thank and express his appreciation for his children Sam Crow and Eleanor Crow. Suresh Lodha would like to express his gratitude towards his spouse Madhu Lodha, without whose unwavering support this work would never have come to fruition.

      Introduction

      What is inequality? The goal of equality expresses the idea that each person should have comparable freedoms across a range of dimensions. Inequalities are, then, constraints that hinder accomplishment of those freedoms. There is debate about which dimensions of freedom should be prioritized. At the same time, however, there is substantial global common ground that deprivations below a range of achievements constitute unacceptable inequality. This common ground is formulated, most obviously, in the Millennium Development Goals, but also in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), and in the constitutions of many nations. Another way of answering the question “What is inequality?” comes from sociologist Göran Therborn (2006: 4): inequalities are differences we consider unjust. Humans are diverse, and social conditions across the planet vary, but are raised to the level of injustice – an inequality – when they violate a moral norm and when, as Therborn puts it, the inequality is capable of being changed (2009: 20). When 2 percent of adults possess more than half of all global wealth, when one child in seven dies before the age of five in Sub-Saharan Africa, when one in five girl children is allowed to die young, or is selectively aborted, as happens in China, many consider that unjust. Theories of ethics and justice, from the Left and the Right of the political spectrum, demand equality in one dimension or another in order to speak plausibly to all (Sen 1992). Even theories that argue against equality are concerned with some dimension of inequality. Not only do income-egalitarians … demand equal incomes, and welfare-egalitarians ask for equal welfare levels, but also … pure libertarians demand equality with respect to an entire class of rights and liberties. They are all “egalitarians” in some essential way … (Sen 1992: ix) So, economist and philosopher Amartya Sen argues that ethical and political theories debate not egalitarianism versus freedom, but what dimension of equality should be sought. This atlas broadens the debate from a narrow definition of inequality that focuses on inequality of income because we suspect that specific dimensions of inequality have causes and possible mitigations related to that dimension. Nonetheless, there are some general processes behind a range of inequalities. What causes inequality? While inequalities are often palpable daily experiences for the injured individual, the causes may be multiple and complex. Therborn (2006, 2009) has, nonetheless, suggested a useful fourfold summary of key causes of inequality (which we simplify): Exploitation – the extraction of value by a superior group from an inferior group, for example, employers using low-paid labor; Exclusion – discrimination by one group excluding another, for example, racism; Distantiation – economic mechanisms, such as the bonus

      culture, that result in a widening distance between low-ranking employees and executives, countries that are not industrializing and those that are; Hierarchy – advantages within formal organizations, such as rank within an administration, corporation, or army. These causes of inequality arise both from an individual’s initial endowments, of skill and fortune, and from their location in systems of opportunities structured by nation, class, gender,