In a report ahead of the G20 meetings in Johannesburg, hosted by the South African government later this month, the expert panel said the gap in global wealth between rich and poor will widen over the next decade without a permanent monitoring group such as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said the report, commissioned by the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, found inequality growing in more than eight in 10 of the world’s countries.
The report said 83% of all countries, accounting for 90% of the world’s population, met the World Bank’s definition of high inequality. It added that countries with high inequality were seven times more likely to experience democratic decline than more equal countries.
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The report said new analysis showed that between 2000 and 2024, the world’s top 1% captured 41% of all new wealth, while only 1% went to the bottom 50%.
The committee said a groundbreaking study by the Italian economist Salvatore Morelli showed as much as $70tn of wealth would be passed to the next generations by 2035.
“Wealth inequalities have a forward momentum, as compound interest increases fortunes and, in the absence of effective inheritance taxes, wealth is handed down from one generation to another, undermining social mobility and economic efficiency,” it said.