The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions

by Jason Hickel

This story has the benefit of feeling intuitively right. After all, we’re aware that countries like China and some East Asian economies have made dramatic leaps towards industrialisation, and have produced large and growing middle classes. And indeed that is exactly the key point. As it turns out, the trend towards greater global equality has been driven entirely by China and East Asia. Take China out of the picture, and the good news narrative melts away. In fact, the economists Sudhir Anand and Paul Segal show that if we take China out of the Gini figures, we see that global inequality has been increasing, not decreasing – up from 50 in 1988 to 58 in 2005.45 This is important, because – once again – China and East Asia are some of the only places where structural adjustment was not imposed by Washington.