The Blackwell Companion to Globalization

Chapter 28

Globalization and Global Inequalities: Recent Trends

GLENN FIREBAUGH AND BRIAN GOESLING

GLOBAL INEQUALITY

One of the most contentious aspects of the globalization debate focuses on globalization’s effect on global inequality, especially its effect on global income inequality. Globalization critics and defenders alike point to global inequality as key to their argument: critics aver that globalization has worsened inequality, while defenders aver the opposite. All sides agree that the ‘problem of global inequality has become one of the most pressing and contentious issues on the global agenda’ (Held and McGrew 2000: 27). So it is important to know the inequality trends – the point of this chapter.

The question of whether global inequality is rising or declining has been hotly debated among academics, international organizations, political activists and others. Among academics, views have changed dramatically in the last few years. As recently as 2001, Robert Wade probably represented the majority view when he wrote in The Economist that ‘New evidence suggests global inequality is worsening rapidly’ (Wade 2001: 72). That claim was soon called into question by a number of empirical studies which, using improved methods and newly available data, concluded that the level of income inequality in the world has been declining at least since 1980. Other studies went even further, arguing that if global inequality is expanded beyond income to include measures such as life expectancy, ...