Inequality by design

Economic inequality has long stood at the centre of debates on how societies are organised and how prosperity is shared.

- Santosh Kumar Mohapatra

While disparities have always existed, by 2025 inequality has reached levels that demand urgent moral, political, and economic attention. The gains of globalisation and economic growth have accrued overwhelmingly to anarrowelite, while vast sections of humanity continue to struggle for secure livelihoods, social protection, and basic dignity. These divides are neither accidental nor inevitable; they are the direct outcomes of political choices, institutional arrangements, and entrenched asymmetries of power.

‘The World Inequality Report 2026 (WIR 2026), produced by the World Inequality Lab under the leadership of Lucas Chancel, Ricardo Gémez-Carrera, Rowaida Moshrif, and Thomas Piketty, provides one of the most comprehensive and rigorously documented analyses of inequality in the twenty-first century. The third in the series after the 2018 and 2022 editions, the report draws on contributions from over 200 scholars worldwide and is prefaced by Joseph Stiglitz and Jayati Ghosh. Its conclusion is explicit: global inequality remains at historically extreme levels and is deeply multidimensional, spanning income, wealth, gender, climate vulnerability, and access to basic human capabilities.