The story so far: The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened economic inequalities across the world. Not only has the pandemic led to the deaths of millions of people globally, but it has also exposed the weakness of public health systems and social and income protections for people worldwide. In short, the coronavirus pandemic has brought into relief that peoples’ life chances are directly linked to their access to wealth and healthcare, their positions of power in society, their racial and caste identities, and their geographic locations.
What is the “Inequality Kills” report?
- “Inequality Kills: The unparalleled action needed to combat unprecedented inequality in the wake of COVID-19” is a report released in January 2022 by Oxfam, a U.K.-based consortium of 21 charitable organisations that have a global presence.
- The report points out a startling statistic: 160 million people were rendered poor during the pandemic, while the ten richest people doubled their fortunes since the start of the pandemic. Therefore, extreme inequality should be seen as a form of ‘economic violence’.
- The report also argues that the climate crisis is undergirded by inequality between countries. It points out that the “wealthiest 1% of humanity are responsible for twice as many emissions as the poorest 50%”.
“Inequality Kills: The unparalleled action needed to combat unprecedented inequality in the wake of COVID-19” is a report released in January 2022 by Oxfam, a U.K.-based consortium of 21 charitable organisations that have a global presence. It is authored by Nabil Ahmad, Nafkote Dabi, Max Lawson, Megan Lowthers, Anna Marriott and Leah Mugehera. The report argues for sustained and immediate action to end the pandemic, address global inequality and initiate concerted measures to tackle the climate emergency. The central argument of the report is that inequality is a death sentence for people that are marginalised by social and economic structures and removed from political decision making. The report points out a startling statistic: 160 million people were rendered poor during the pandemic, while the ten richest people doubled their fortunes since the start of the pandemic.
Holding governments to account the report identifies “vaccine apartheid” (unequal access to vaccines between countries) and the lack of universal vaccination programs in many countries as a cause of the emergence of multiple new strains of the coronavirus that has led to the continuation of the pandemic. It also demonstrates how emergency government expenditure (estimated at $16 trillion) that was meant to keep economies afloat during this crisis, inflated stock prices. This resulted in billionaires’ collective wealth increasing by $5 trillion during the pandemic. Identifying this process as “the billionaire variant”, the report says that this vertical aggregation of global wealth into the hands of a few is “profoundly dangerous for our world”.
Why does the report say that inequality kills?
For the writers of the report inequality is not an abstract theory. Instead, they see it as institutionalised violence against poorer people. The report categorically states, “Extreme inequality is a form of ‘economic violence’—where structural and systemic policy and political choices that are skewed in favor of the richest and most powerful people result in direct harm to the vast majority of ordinary people worldwide.” The report identifies higher inequality with more crime and violence and less social trust. The brunt of inequality and the violence it begets is borne, for instance, by women across the world, Dalits in India, Black, Native American and Latinx persons in the United States and indigenous groups in many countries. Pointing to the example of women, the report demonstrates how lockdowns led to an increase in violence against women worldwide. However, the report says that the problem runs a lot deeper as 13 million women have not returned to the workforce and 20 million girls are at risk of losing access to education. This means that the goal of gender equality has suffered a huge set back which will take at least 135 years to correct. To summarise, women who were already unequal before the pandemic are now more unequal because of increased economic inequality.
The report also argues that the climate crisis is undergirded by inequality between countries. Extreme neoliberal models of economic growth have led to a skewed system of carbon-intensive production, that favours richer countries while shifting the risk onto poorer countries. The report points out that the “wealthiest 1% of humanity are responsible for twice as many emissions as the poorest 50%”. Finally, the report shows how poverty, caused by rising inequality, also leads to hunger and deaths due to hunger. For instance, 369 million children have reportedly lost access to school meals during the pandemic. For millions of these children this was their most nutritious meal of the day.
How does the report propose to rectify global inequality?
The “Inequality Kills” report proposes far-reaching changes to structures of government, economy and policy-making to fight inequality. It urgently asks for “vaccine recipes” to be made open-source so that every qualified vaccine manufacturer can manufacture them. In doing so the report asks for monopolies over vaccines held by pharmaceutical giants and anchored in place through the World Trade Organisation, to end. The report then asks for governments to “claw” back the wealth from billionaires by administering solidarity taxes higher than 90% especially on the billionaires that have profited during and because of the pandemic. In addition to this, the report asks for permanent cancellation of tax havens, progressive taxation on corporations and an end to tax dodging by corporations. The report then suggests that all of this regained wealth be redirected towards building income safety nets, universalising healthcare for everyone, investing in green technologies and democratising them, and, investing in protecting women from violence. Finally, the report advocates for redistributing power along with wealth by strengthening workers’ unions, boosting political representation of marginalised groups, and asserting human rights.
Vasundhara Sirnate Drennan is a political scientist and journalist. She is also the creator of the India Violence Archive, a citizen’s data initiative aimed at recording collective public violence in India.
