Reading 2021-12-27

Metadata

• Ref:: Our World in Data
• Title:: Global economic inequality: what matters most for your living conditions is not who you are, but where you are
• Author:: Max Roser
• Year of publication:: 2021
• Category:: Blog
• Topic::

Notes from reading

If you live on $30 a day you are part of the richest 15% of the world ($30 a day roughly corresponds to the poverty lines set in high-income countries).

consider a situation of extreme inequality between countries, such as today’s inequality between a poor and rich country. In this case the home country of a person determines everything. The shown data for Ethiopia and Denmark makes this clear

All of this is not to say that a person’s work ethic, talent, and skills do not matter for their income. They do. But it is to say that all these personal factors together matter much less than the factor that is entirely outside of a person’s control: whether they are born into a large, productive economy or not.

What gives people the chance for a good life is when the entire society and economy around them changes for the better. This is what development and economic growth are about: transforming a place so that what was previously only attainable for a few comes into reach for all.