THE TRUTH ABOUT GLOBAL INEQUALITY

Proponents of globalisation claim that the process brings universal benefits, while opponents equate it with social and environmental destruction. This dichotomy obscures more than it reveals. There are at least three distinct concepts of inequality. First, there is inequality within countries. It is what people mean when they argue that globalisation may have widened income disparities in Brazil, or in the UK. Second, there is international inequality, that refers to differences between countries' average per capita incomes, or gross domestic products. This is what people mean when they describe the effects of globalisation on countries' economic growth rates. The third concept - global inequality - combines the two previous concepts. It refers to income differentials between all individuals in the world. However, the significance of the global inequality yardstick is not always clear. For example, a decline in global inequality may obscure widening disparities within countries - if the latter are compensated by growing average incomes in poor countries.