International inequality
Economists have begun to consider the set of economic institutions adopted by countries as a choice that is in turn determined endogenously by competing social forces.
Dyankov et al in “The New Comparative Economics”[5] discusses this idea and uses the IPF (institutional Possibility Frontier)[5] to measure the optimal points of dictatorship vs disorder trade off in individual countries.
In the end the location of the IPF shows a countries “civic capital”[5] or the institutional possibility of a given society in order to reach its optimum.
Many now argue that this study is most relevant to our modern-day capitalist society in order to impose efficient institutional design depending on a country's specific characteristics.In a widely cited paper by Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson, the authors concluded that the majority of present-day inequality among former European colonies can be attributed to the persisting role of economic institutions.
In the context of development, path dependence is the idea that certain points in history may have an outsized and persistent impact on the long-term economic and political character of nations.
Political scientist James Mahoney has examined the political consequences of a period of liberal reform in Central America during the 19th and early 20th centuries, and argued that whether policies were implemented along radical or reformist guidelines directly determined the success of the liberalization efforts and ultimately resulted in vastly different political outcomes which persisted for decades, ranging from military authoritarian regimes (Guatemala and El Salvador) to progressive democracy (Costa Rica).
Another concept of international inequality in the context of development can be found in the notion of dualism in the world, understood as "the coexistence of two situations or phenomena (one desirable and the other not) that are mutually exclusive to different groups of [international] society — for example, extreme poverty and affluence, modern and traditional economic sectors, growth and stagnation, and higher education among a few amid large-scale illiteracy."
Second, the number of successful fundamental reforms in many of the concerned countries largely did not showcase significant progress and decrease in the overall state of inequality, whether in domestic or foreign levels.
[13] The research and measures of the World Bank, say that "Covid-19 has increased inequality in nearly every sphere: in the availability of vaccines, in economic growth rates, in access to education and health care, and the scale of job and income losses".
[14] Between 2020 and 2021 global billionaire wealth grew by $4.4 trillion but at the same time, more than 100 million people fell below the poverty line.
Staff shortages and breaks of working activity because of compulsory quarantines of Covid-positive workers are the reason for the replacement of the human labor force with robots.
Tourism, gastronomy, recreational services and accommodation, airlines, and industries that rely on personal interactions have been the hardest hit.
[19] One of the reasons for their highest number of cases and deaths is their worst average healthcare standards among the major developed economies.
[16] The poorest suffer from the lack of a universal healthcare system and high prices of medicaments (and for health care, in general) the most.
However, despite having the technology and the resources, the society failed to raise vaccine supply and distribute enough doses in poor countries.
By April 2020, an unprecedented 1.4 billion students were shut out of their pre-primary, primary, and secondary schools in more than 190 countries and the classroom present education had moved to online distance learning.
Lack of opportunities, tools, or access to affordable, reliable internet connections were daily problems to deal with.
[22] Children from low-income families were more likely to be excluded from online distance learning because of an inability to afford sufficient internet or devices.
Education from home implies a large amount of self-regulated learning where students must independently acquire and understand the academic content without the support of teachers.
In developing and poor countries girls who were out of school were at greater risk than boys of facing abuses such as child marriage and other forms of gender-based violence.
[29][30][31][32][33] As of 2001[update], the major component of the world's income inequality (the global Gini coefficient) was comprised by two groups of countries (called the "twin peaks" by Quah [1997]).
This group includes India, Indonesia and rural China, and comprises 2.1 billion people with an income level under 1,000 PPP$.
[39]: 202 As academic Lan Xiaohuan writes, during that period, "the number of poor people in the world outside China remained more or less unchanged.
[40] Potential approaches to decrease inequality include: Research has stressed the need to address inequality with a multi-pronged approach, including taxation reform and curbing excesses associated with financial deregulation, country-specific circumstances, and potential trade-offs with other policy objectives.
