Oxfam, the charitable organisation which works to alleviate global poverty, has issued a report detailing the growth of the global wealth gap. The report, ‘An economy for the 1%’, examines new data for China and India that indicates the poorest half of the world owns less than previously estimated; and that in 2016, the world’s 8 richest people owned the same as the 3.6 billion people who make up the poorest half of the global population. The report launch coincides with the World Economic Forum at Davos, the summit attended by the world’s political and business leaders – Taoiseach Enda Kenny is expected to be in attendance.
According to the report, the wealth of the so-called super-rich has increased by an average of 11% since 2009. Meanwhile, 70% of people live in a country that has seen a rise in inequality in the last 30 years. The report identifies corporate tax avoidance and tax evasion as being a factor which costs poor countries at least $100 billion per year – enough to provide education for 124 million children who do not attend school. The report calls for an end to the ‘race to the bottom’ concerning corporate tax.
A number of false assumptions driving income inequality are highlighted, including the idea that Gross Domestic Product (GDP growth) should be the primary goal of policy-making, and that the current economic model is gender neutral. The report states that women face high levels of discrimination in the workplace and take on a disproportionate amount of unpaid care work; it takes 170 years for women to be paid the same as a man. As part of its research, Oxfam interviewed women working in a garment factory in Vietnam, making clothes for some of the world’s biggest fashion brands. The women interviewed worked 12 hours a day, 6 days per week and were paid $1 an hour.
The report contains Oxfam’s blueprint for a “more human economy”, emphasising policies which push for greater levels of wealth and resource redistribution. Oxfam Ireland has submitted two concrete ways in which the Irish government can address the issues of income inequality raised in the report. First, the establishment of a national proofing committee to create the institutional framework for economic proofing as a means of advancing equality. Secondly, implementing measures to tack corporate tax avoidance such as implementing controlled foreign company rules to prevent profit-shifting, and requiring multinationals to publicly publish country-by-country reports for each country in which they operate.
Click here for the full report.