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Tackling 21st century inequality: Challenges and potential solutions
These statistics speak to just one of many pervasive and pernicious inequalities that exist in the world and are driving frustration and resentment. But with the scale and scope of the challenges mapped out, how do we respond?
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People are increasingly taking to the streets because they feel that economic and political structures are rigged against them and that their voices are not being heard. (Shutterstock.com/nep0)
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aves of protests have exploded around the world with people demonstrating against a range of problems, demanding an end to corruption, pushing for action on climate change and pressing for personal freedom.
The anger of the demonstrators has caught governments off guard. Asia and the Pacific, the world’s most dynamic and diverse region, has reflected those protests.
The events of this year — and how they came to pass — are a distillation of the intertwined challenges that will come to define the 21st century: climate crisis, automation and inequality.
People are increasingly taking to the streets because they feel that economic and political structures are rigged against them and that their voices are not being heard.
These grievances underpin the core analysis of United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP) new Human Development Report (HDR), which presents decision-makers with the choice to overturn deep-rooted systemic drivers of inequality. In doing so, there is the opportunity to simultaneously eliminate extreme deprivation, while equipping people to live with dignity, manage the risks of global warming and benefit from artificial intelligence and robotics.
Inequality is not inevitable, but it will get harder to correct humanity’s current self-destructive trajectory if we go about business as usual.
People in low human development countries are missing out on opportunities needed to get ahead, such as university education and even the most basic human needs are still not being met for many. About 58 percent of people in low human development countries do not have even a primary education and as high as about 97 percent do not have tertiary education.
