FACTORS LEADING TO THE INCREASE IN THE GAP BETWEEN RICH AND POOR NATIONS DUE TO GLOBALIZATION
INTERNATIONAL INEQUALITY
Inequality must be defined and be able to be measured so that comparisons can be made between rich and poor countries. Once the causes are determined, the effects of globalization can be evaluated and be measured. The World Bank defines inequality as the disparity of income and standard of living among nations and their citizens (Birdsall, 2002)
The income gap that exists between the rich and poor countries has become substantial. In 2003, the richest fifth of the world’s population received 85% of the total world income, while poorest fifth received just 1.4% of the global income (infoplease, 2005).When the GDP is
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By contrast, in developing countries, farming accounts for 30 to 60 percent of the Gross Domestic Product and up to 70 percent of the labor force. This is why labor rights protection is at least as critical for developing countries as intellectual property rights protection is for the rich.
Developing countries were promised a new regime that would allow them to sell their goods and trade their way out of poverty through undistorted market openness. This required generous market access by the rich for the products of the poor, and also reduction-cum-elimination of market-distorting producer and export subsidies, with the resulting dumping of the rich world's produce on world markets.
Thus Europe launched its "Everything but Arms" initiative whereby it would open its markets to the world's poorest countries. The initiative foundered on too many non-tariff barriers, for example in the technical rules of origin. The US seemed to offer so-called EBP - Everything But what they produce. Under its proposals, developing countries would have been free to export jet engines and super-computers to the US, but not textiles, agricultural products, or processed foods.
Elimination of rich country production and export subsidies, and the opening of markets, while necessary, would not be sufficient for developing countries to trade their way out of underdevelopment. They also have a desperate need to institute market-friendly incentives and regulatory
Globalization, especially economic globalization is one of greatest concerns of our generation that has more negative effects than it can benefit developing nations.. This is an economic system that has been conceived by capitalist nations, multinational, and the worlds largest cooperate bodies through carefully propagated policies to facilitate movement of their goods, products, investing capital, and ambitions. Their main driving tool is an idea called international free trade. What stimulates their interest is the ambition to get rich and richer. With the aid of communication, transport technological development, and other induced free trade, but unjust policies, economic globalization has gained a lot of grounds over the years. Very few developing nations have gained from it but majority of the developing nations continue to be penalized by the global economic village ideology. This is because the drive has not been balanced by intentions to give everyone
The insurgents of globalization are exacerbating income inequality, within developing and developed nations. One of the most powerful country’s in the world the United States an Industrialized nation are allowing large corporations to seek maximize profits without regards for the local
Global communications, space exploration, and international events are just some of the things that formed the interconnected web between nations and sped up globalization. However, as much as we like to think that the world is making progress, there is still the undeniable fact that some countries citizens are much better off and enjoy a higher standard of living than compared to the people of other nations. Ever since the era of globalization began, the gap between the First and Third World is becoming bigger and bigger.
International trade may or may not reduce income inequalities within developing countries but, it can enhance trade-induced growth, which increases average incomes providing more resources with which to tackle poverty. Poor countries, such as Bolivia and Paraguay, have more unequal distributions of income than the United States. The distribution of income in the United States is less equal than in some moderate-income countries. The United States has the most unequal distribution of income of any high-income country in the world. A reason why the United States distribution varies between the poor countries and the high-income countries is because of the income mobility. Income mobility are the changes in an individuals or a family’s income over time. That is another reason why inequality distribution occurs because just because an individual is in one quintile one year does not mean they will be in that same quintile the year after that. People are constantly moving up and down in the social statuses. For instance, a person in the bottom quintile, or poverty level, might open a new business and it becomes a great success and that person then becomes a billionaire, that person just went from the bottom quintile to the top quintile in a matter of a few years. The complete
In the past 20 years’ income inequality has become a major issue in particular within the United States (US) where a significant income gap has occurred. This is exemplified by the US Gini index (GI), a measure of income inequality, which has risen from 43 in 1990 to around 47 in 2010 and is continuing to trend upward (David Moss, 2011). This has now become a problem that both develop and developing nations face. The main causes being globalization and technology. In developed countries globalization has increased cheap foreign imports with technology making importing extremely cost efficient. There’s also the outsourcing or the replacement of low skill jobs with newer technology. These two processes have contributed to higher profits for executives while low skill workers are losing their jobs by the thousands. In developing countries globalization has led to low skill workers having to compete in cheap labor markets dropping their wages even further. Technology in these developing countries has also increased income inequality with their lower class unable even be literate enough to learn newer technology. Therefore, inequality damages economies and workforces on a world scale
The development gap refers to the financial and social disparity between the poorest and wealthiest in society. Where economic indicators are low, social indicators are often also low, whereas the wealthiest countries also enjoy better healthcare and education. This gap has been widening for decades and is at its widest today. The poor are not necessarily getting poorer; in fact nearly everybody has seen an improvement in quality of life over the last 20 years. The reason the gap is widening is because the richest are getting richer and having their quality of life improve at a far quicker rate.
Here, researchers looked at data in global income inequality over the past 200 years. By looking at the evidence, Oatley comes to the conclusion that globalization has indeed resulted in the increasing inequality gap with increasing wealth for the rich, which in turn has resulted in the increasing poverty for the poor. According to Oatley, globalization has also transformed social inequality from simply being a local problem (state based) to being an international one. This is to say that wealth is globally being accumulated by the wealthy from the poor. Here, the net effect of globalization appears to be bad. This is not only because of the fact that inequality is on the increase, but also because it has significant impacts on different nations in general. This is to say that globalization leaves various third world countries at the mercy of other wealthy nations. For instance, although the global south (developing and third world countries) are dependent on the developed nations, they are also the producers of raw material and even labor. However, raw materials are sold cheaply to the developed nations, where they are processed and refined and then re-sold at high profit margins. While the developing nations and other third world countries will indeed see some benefits here, it is
The global wealth distribution continues to be defined by a massive inequality of wealth between advanced capitalist countries and the least developed countries. The gap between the thirty richest and the thirty poorest countries, in per capital income has grown from 17:1 in 1980 to 27:1 in 2002 . Despite massive aid and trade liberalisation programmes, development strategies in poor countries have not resulted in sustainable economic development but have instead resulted in ‘massive underdevelopment and impoverishment, untold exploitation and oppressions’ . Despite the success of some newly industrialising countries, most notably China, many of the world’s poorest countries continue to be reliant on the export of raw materials and agricultural
In “Introduction”, author Branko Milanovic looks at “both income inequality and political issues related to inequality from a global perspective” (1). He says it is time to look at income inequality as a global phenomenon instead of as a national one (Milanovic, 2). Reasons for this include: learning about the ways people outside this country live their lives can serve pragmatic purposes, such as learning better and more efficient ways to do things, we now have the ability to focus on global inequality with the data now available, and the most important reason is that the study of global inequality allows people to see how the world has changed (Milanovic, 2). Milanovic then goes on to consider global inequality as a whole (6). He argues that
In recent years there has been an increasing interest in Income inequality. This is because of the rise in the income gap between rich and poor people within countries, and since soon between the countries.
Globalization is often cited as a harbinger of income equality. We are currently in the midst of what is known as Globalization 2.0 or the second wave of globalization. Globalization 2.0 has been occurring at much more massive scale than the first wave and at a much more rapid pace. That being said, official statistics show that income inequality has risen spectacularly as measured by official statistics, indicating a correlation between globalization and income inequality. However, there are strong arguments that the official statistics are not reflective of the entire truth of the matter. In a paper on inequality and prices, the authors
Global poverty and inequality have steadily increased since the 1980s. The causes of this gross inequity are the policy choices that governments make, the institutions that govern economic relationships, the power and influence of the world's largest corporations, the history, the war and political instability, the national debt and the vulnerability to natural disasters.
According to Richard N (2006), the free movement of goods due to free market or trade has led to globalization. Though the effects have been assumed to benefit all, there is a large inequality among the poor and the rich both within the countries among the nations. Capitalism is contributed to technological advancement, which has then influenced free trade. The uncontrolled globalization has resulted in more developed societies becoming rich. The rich economies are able to exploit the market by producing at lower price due to their level of technology and advancement in research. They are also able to protect their economy through export subsidies and production subsidies to their farmers. This translates to lower prices for their goods in the global market hence controlling it. The poor countries despite having comparative advantage in production of some commodities they also suffer from competitive advantage from the developed countries they are forced to sell their commodities at a lower price than their expected. They suffer a lot in global trade, which is mainly controlled by the wealthier nations. There are regulations, which restrict the flow of goods in the world market from poor societies. This makes
Income inequality and poverty and are issues affecting a majority of people around the different parts of the globe. These issues exist and are increasingly becoming a major concern in both developing and developed countries. The purpose of this paper is to show some of the causes and effects of income inequality and poverty in developing and developed countries. Income inequality varies especially by region, education and social standing and hence increasingly widening for so many years. In addition, a large group of people in the world have the inability to access high-quality education, shelter, food, clothing, and basic medicine. Business activities are an important factor in the economy and have the ability to aid in eradicating poverty through providing fair wages reducing the uneven distribution of income.
Global stratification can be defined that globe countries and areas are not on an equal footing in the process of economic, political and cultural globalization (Andersen & Taylor, 2006). The economic globalization has exacerbated the imbalance of world economy and has widened the wealth gap. Globalization has brought unfair relationships between developing countries and developed countries. Gao (2000) noted that economic globalization has expanded the gap between South and North. And it has brought huge shocks to national economy of developing countries. The international economic organizations like the Word Bank, IMF and WTO are in the hand of developed countries (El-Ojeili, C. & Hayden, P., 2006.). All the principles, institutions and sequences for the world economic operation are made by them. (Sklair, 2002)What’s more, the economic, technical and management advantages that is owned by Western countries cannot be easily and fully surpassed by developing countries.