Tackling Inequality

• Author: Lyndsay Walsh
• Position: LYNDSAY WALSH is a graduate in natural sciences of Trinity College Dublin, where she is currently studying for a master's in development practice.
• Pages: 39-41

D

o you prefer to hear good news or bad

news rst? I will begin by giving you the

(unsurprisingly) bad news. Today’s world is

an unequal place. Sta ndards of living vary

massively both between a nd within countries. To

narrow it down to its most blunt statistic, if you were

born in Hong Kong Special Admin istrative Region,

your life expecta ncy is nearly double that of someone

born in Swaziland, 84 a nd 49 years, respectively.

e good news is that in recent dec ades many

global indicators of living st andards have improved.

e United Nations’ Millennium Development

Goals, a group of target s aimed at reducing poverty

and raising livi ng standards, were la rgely suc-

cessful. ose living in extreme povert y dropped

from 1.9 billion in 1990 to 836 million in 2015,

the proportion of undernourished people i n low-

income countries fell from 23 percent in 1990 to

13 percent in 2014, and worldwide primary school

enrollment has reached 90 percent. es e statistics

oer hope for a trajectory toward an equa l world.

ere is more bad news, however, in that climate

change threaten s to undo this progress and create

fu rth er in equi ty.

How can we address inequality in the twenty-first century? Start with climate change.

Lyndsay Walsh

Tackling Inequality

December 2019 | FINANCE & DEVELOPMENT 39

ART: ISTOC K/ SI GAL