[EQ] OECD: Growing Unequal?

Growing Unequal? Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development OECD
Paris, October, 21 - 2008

Income inequality and poverty rising in most OECD countries

Website: http://www.oecd.org/document/53/0,3343,en_2649_33933_41460917_1_1_1_37419,00.html#NEWS

 

 “…..Growing inequalities poses three challenges, economic, political and ethical. OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría warned of the dangers posed by inequality and the need for governments to tackle it. “Growing inequality is divisive. It polarises societies, it divides regions within countries, and it carves up the world between rich and poor. Greater income inequality stifles upward mobility between generations, making it harder for talented and hard-working people to get the rewards they deserve. Ignoring increasing inequality is not an option.”

A key driver of income inequality has been the number of low-skilled and poorly educated who are out of work. More people living alone or in single-parent households have also contributed….

 “…..Growing Unequal? brings together a range of analyses on the distribution of economic resources in OECD countries. The evidence on income distribution and poverty covers, for the first time, all 30 OECD countries in the mid-2000s, while information on trends extending back to the mid-1980s is provided for around two-thirds of the countries.

The report also describes inequalities in a range of domains (such as household wealth, consumption patterns, in-kind public services) that are typically excluded from conventional discussion about the distribution of economic resources among individuals and households. Precisely how much inequality there is in a society is not determined randomly, nor is it beyond the power of governments to change, so long as they take note of the sort of up-to-date evidence included in this report….”

 

 

Multilingual summaries, in:
Chinese	Finnish	Hungarian	Korean	Slovak
Czech	French	Icelandic	Norwegian	Spanish
Danish	German	Italian	Polish	Swedish
English	Greek	Japanese	Portuguese	Turkish

 

 

           

Webcast: http://interwebcast.oecd.org/conferences/1_255/en/event_medias/video.wvx

 

                               Read the press release

                               Read the speech by OECD Secretary-General 

                               Read Oxford Professor Sir Anthony Atkinson's related article in the OECD Observer

                               Read the media brief: Are we growing unequal?

                               Watch the videos: 

=> Rising inequality and poverty (video feature)
=> Interview with Mark Pearson on key findings (in English)
=> Entretien avec Martine Durand sur les résultats-clés (en français)

 

 

 

 

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