G20 committee says world is facing an inequality emergency

The G20 Extraordinary Committee of Independent Experts said the world is facing an inequality emergency.

The committee, led by Nobel laureate Professor Joseph Stiglitz, said this inequality is not only unfair and undermines societal cohesion, but can disrupt democracy too.

It’s recommended that South Africa establishes an international panel on inequality to support governments with authoritative assessments and analyses of inequality.

President Cyril Ramaphosa is due to receive the report at his official Cape Town office, Tuynhuys, on Tuesday afternoon.

In August, Ramaphosa established the task team of six experts to report to the G20 on the state of wealth and income inequality and their impacts on growth, poverty and multilateralism.

As South Africa’s G20 presidency draws to a close, the group has produced a more than 60-page report, in which it recommends that, similar to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, South Africa establishes one on inequality that can inform and empower policymaking.

The panel would be a technical bodythat would monitor existing and new research and assess gaps in knowledge.

It would periodically produce assessments of the impacts of income and wealth inequality on other dimensions, such as health and opportunity.

“The committee’s work showed us that inequality is a crisis in need of concerted action. The necessary step to taking this action is for policymakers, political leaders, the private sector, journalists and academia to have accurate and timely information and analysis of the inequality crisis,” said Stiglitz in a statement.

Among the panel’s findings is that the richest 1% captured 41% of new wealth since 2000, with the bottom 50% of humanity having increased their wealth by just 1%.

The report finds that 83% of countries, which account for 90% of the world’s population, meet the world’s definition of high inequality.

The experts said that the overall income gap between countries of the global north and the global south remains very high.

Stiglitz is due to present the report to the president

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