The gap between the rich and poor in a range of countries has reached its widest in 30 years and the trend has harmed growth, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said yesterday.
The OECD said in a new report that most of its 34-member countries had seen a growing widening in the inequality gap.
“In most OECD countries, the gap between rich and poor is at its highest level since 30 years,” the report said. “Today, the richest 10 percent of the population in the OECD area earn 9.5 times the income of the poorest 10 percent; in the 1980s this ratio stood at 7:1 and has been rising continuously ever since.”
The OECD counts both developed and developing countries as members, including nations from the EU, as well as the US, Turkey, Mexico and Japan. China, Brazil and India are not members.
In the couple of decades leading up to the global economic crisis, average household income grew for all OECD countries by about 1.6 percent annually.
“However, in three-quarters of OECD countries household incomes of the top 10 percent grew faster than those of the poorest 10 percent, resulting in widening income inequality,” the report said.
During the recent post-crisis years, average household income stagnated or fell in most member countries, it said.
The gap between the rich and poor varies widely across OECD member states and is often narrower in many continental European nations and the Nordic countries, according to the report.
However, the average income ratio between the richest 10 percent and the poorest 10 percent skyrockets in other member states.
It “reaches around 10 to 1 in Italy, Japan, Korea, Portugal and the United Kingdom, between 13 and 16 to 1 in Greece, Israel, Turkey and the United States, and between 27 and 30 to 1 in Mexico and Chile,” the report said.
The report said that expanding income inequality has negatively affected the economies of member countries, estimating that it has knocked more than 10 percentage points off growth in Mexico and New Zealand.
“In the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Finland and Norway, the growth rate would have been more than one-fifth higher had income disparities not widened,” the report said.
At the same time, according to the OECD’s calculations, greater equality helped boost GDP per capita in Spain, France and Ireland prior to the economic crisis.
The OECD report called for anti-poverty programs along with increased access to high-quality education, training and healthcare.
“The paper also finds no evidence that redistributive policies, such as taxes and social benefits, harm economic growth, provided these policies are well designed, targeted and implemented,” the OECD said in a statement announcing the report.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last