The rise of inequality and its contested meanings

While poverty has been diminishing in absolute terms and relative income has been growing on a global scale for over two centuries, inequality – as measured by instruments such as the GINI coefficient – has been increasing since the early 1980s. With the financial crisis of 2007, the expanding digitalisation of the economy and the current pandemic, global inequality has further worsened, as fortunes of the superrich attain unprecedented levels and revenue concentrates in the top percentiles of societies.