Inequalities continue to increase everywhere in the world, especially in emerging countries as absolute values, but more significantly in the Western world if we look at the growth trend in recent decades, from 1980 to 2016. This was revealed by the report presented by the French economist Thomas Piketty and by Lucas Cancel of the Paris School of Economics, based on 175 million tax and statistical data processed by the wid.world project (wealth and income database).
The data show that as of 2016 the three places where wealth is most unbalanced are Brazil, where the wealthiest 1% of the population holds 55% of the wealth, India, with the same percentage, and the Middle East as an area , where the richest 1% even own 61% of total assets. But above all, what is impressive is the growth rate of the most industrialized countries: from 1980 to 2016 the percentage of national income owned by the richest 10% has increased in the United States (and Canada) from 34 to 47%, in Russia from 21 to 46%, in China from 27 to 41%. The gap is less marked in Europe, where it started from 33% but stopped at 37% last year.
It's right on different trend between Western Europe and the USA, which in 1980 started from a similar figure, which focuses on the study, carried out with the contribution of 70 scholars from all over the world: in 1980, the share of GDP in the hands of the poorest part of the population was 24% in Western Europe and 21% overseas; today it is almost stable at 22% in the old continent, while it has plunged to 13% in the United States.
“In many cases, inequalities are completely underestimated – comments Piketty, author of the bestseller “Capital in the XNUMXst century” – and they can be explained by the sinking of the lowest incomes but also by a considerable disparity in the educational field and an increasingly less progressive tax system. It is the demonstration that public policies have a strong impact on inequalities”.
The main victim of this unstoppable process is, as has repeatedly emerged, the world middle class. While in fact, in the period under examination, the richest 1% of the global population hoarded 27% of total wealth, the poorest were left with only 12%, but their wealth still grew from 1980 to 2016. Those who have remained at the stake, on the other hand, are the middle bracket, which has hardly recorded any increases in income. And according to the forecasts of the study coordinated by Piketty, between now and 2050 the global middle class will see its share of the pie further reduced, from 29% to 27%. "But this process is not unstoppable - warns Piketty -: it depends on the choices that will be made".
